The Blue Bow

This delicately painted portrait was probably commissioned to mark this young lady’s forthcoming marriage. It shows her with a touch of rouge on her cheeks, her curled hair powdered, wearing a white dress with a tiered frilled collar secured with a blue ribbon bow.

The portrait is set in the original gold frame with plaited brown hair set in an aperture within a blue glass surround.

The son of a wealthy Birmingham industrialist, William Armfield Hobday (1771-1831) was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools when he was eighteen years old. He subsequently worked as a portrait artist in London, Bath and Bristol attracting a fashionable clientele. In later years he also became an art dealer with a gallery in Pall Mall. This venture, coupled with an extravagant lifestyle, resulted in bankruptcy just two years before he died.