Signed and dated lower right: “John Lear ’93”. Titled and inscribed verso: “‘Pedigree’ / watercolor and colored pencil”. Label verso: “John Lear / 201 West Evergreen Avenue / Apt. 414 / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19118”. 

In addition to cultivating his artistic practice, John Lear worked as a freelance illustrator and teacher. The artist’s formal training began at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts), where he studied illustration. During World War II, he served in the Army cavalry in Fort Riley, Kansas, where his service was diverted to painting portraits of officers and their families, as well as illustrating Army training manuals, booklets, and charts. Lear developed what he called a “semi-surrealistic” approach, a style closely akin to the Magic Realist works of artists such as Jared French. In his works, Lear draws on realist yet disparate images to create composite, dreamlike landscapes often peopled by nude or semi-nude male figures, with a decisive emphasis on composition and the formal relations of color.