Painter and printmaker Clark Hobart studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in San Francisco. He then moved to New York and Paris, where he remained for three years. In 1911, he returned to California and, four years later, won a medal for his color monotypes at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco. An interior decorating venture with his wife brought him enough wealth to pursue art at his pleasure for the rest of his life.

This triptych, painted at about the same time as the PPIE, is a loose allegory set in a lush California landscape. With a girl at right tempting a dog with a ball, a young woman at left with a flute, and a young matron at center, the painting comments on the three stages of women’s lives, which in this painting are idealized and beautiful and do not involve work. The women do, perhaps, subtly reference music and the arts (the flute), knowledge (the matron’s pontificating gesture), and sport or athleticism (the ball).