[5] After his death, his children discovered evidence in his documents that he was a Captain in the Haitian army before the American Occupation, which began in 1915.

[2] Obin also painted murals and other decorative pieces for commercial establishments, fraternal organizations, and Protestant chapels in the beginning.

Peters, also an artist, was hoping to promote Haitian art, inspired by the works he had seen decorating voodoo temples, or ounfò (French: humfor).

[3] Obin sent Peters a small painting honouring U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt for ending the 1915–1934 American Occupation of Haiti.

Obin proceeded to send many paintings to the Centre d'Art, and his work soon became sought after by art collectors and souvenir-hunting tourists.

[3] In 1948, Obin, along with artists Rigaud Benoît, Wilson Bigaud, and Castera Bazile, were invited to provide frescoes for the interior of Sainte Trinité, the Episcopal Cathedral in Port-au-Prince.

Two decades after his death, works by Philomé Obin are housed at galleries in Port-au-Prince, Santo Domingo, and Sotheby's in New York.

Coeval Magazine wrote that his "illusion of unsophisticated figurative drawings give way to a precision and detail almost unrecognizable to the naked eye".

The painting has been interpreted as representing "Maîtresse Zulie", a voodoo goddess, but Obin said in 1983 that it was a scene from a vivid dream that he had.

[citation needed] Like most of his paintings, it bears both his boxed signature and its title, in neat letters centered toward the bottom of the work.