Lester George Hornby, printmaker, painter, illustrator and teacher, was born on 27 March 1882 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He first studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Eric Pape School of Art in Boston. Hornby then went to Paris where he studied at the Académie Julian, Académie Colarossi, Académie Delacluse, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and the Sorbonne between 1906 and 1910. He was working in Europe when World War I broke out. He worked as a war correspondent and produced an important series of etchings depicting the war.

Hornby was a member of and exhibited with the Boston Art Club, Guild of Boston Artists, Boston Watercolor Club, Brooklyn Society of Etchers, Chicago Society of Etchers, New York Society of Etchers, California Society of Etchers, and Painter-Gravers of America. He was also a member of the American Art Association of Paris and served as its director between 1902 and 1908.

He eventually moved to Rockport, Maine where he co-founded the Rockport School along with Anthony Thieme and Aldro Thompson Hibbard.

According to Who Was Who in American Art, the etchings of Lester Hornby are represented in over forty U.S. museums. His watercolors, drawings, and etchings were included in numerous solo exhibitions and a retrospective of Hornby’s work was mounted at the Rockport Art Association in 1985.

Lester George Hornby died in Rockport, Maine on 17 December 1956.