Painter, etcher, and art teacher, Hobson Pittman was born in Tarboro, North Carolina. In 1918 he moved to Philadelphia to study art, and from 1920 to 1931 he was active in the Woodstock art colony at Utica, New York. He subsequently joined the faculty of Friends Central Country Day School in Overbrook, Pennsylvania, where he taught until 1957.

In 1946 the magazine publisher Henry R. Luce commissioned Pittman to travel to Charleston, South Carolina, to create a series of pastels of homes, gardens, and churches for the 14 April 1947 issue of Life Magazine. Pittman also painted Clare in Azalea Garden, which depicts Luce's wife, Clare Booth Luce, walking in the garden of Mepkin, their Cooper River plantation and hunting retreat. Two years later 1949, the Luces gave Mepkin to the Roman Catholic Trappist Cistercian Order of Monks. The Luces' burial sites, and the azalea garden depicted in the painting are now on the grounds of Mepkin Abbey.

Biography courtesy of The Charleston Renaissance Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/charleston