Amongst the greatest of modern draughtsmen, John Ward was born in Hereford in 1917 and educated at the Hereford School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art, where he won the Drawing Prize before leaving in 1939 to join the Royal Engineers. After the war he returned to the RCA and won the Travelling Scholarship for 1947. The years 1948-1953 were spent with Vogue magazine. He was elected RA in 1966. From 1976-1987 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Art Collections Fund. He received an Hon.DLitt from the University of Kent in 1980 and was awarded the CBE in 1984. He served as a Trustee of the RA from 1985-1993. He resigned as a Royal Academician in 1997.

Portrait commission, for which he is renowened, have included members of the Royal Family (on numerous occasions) as well as politicians and stars of stage and screen. There have been many solo exhibitions notably with the Jeremy Maas Gallery and latterly with Hazlet, Gooden and Fox. There were retrospective exhibitions at the Royal Museum, Canterbury in 1987 and at Agnews in 1990.