Cleveland born Adam Lehr trained as a house and sign painter as a young man though soon gained more formal training under American painter Archibald Willard, a family friend and author of the famous The Spirit of ’76. In 1880 Lehr departed, with financial assistance from a local merchant, for New York where he studied at the Art Students League for a year. Returning to Cleveland in 1881 Lehr began exhibiting regularly at Cleveland’s Brush and Palette Club, the Watercolor Society, and the Cleveland Society of Artist’s. Known primarily as a still-life and landscape painter, he was a founder of the Cleveland Art Club, comprised of a group of prominent artists who taught at the Academy of Art. Lehr exhibited regularly throughout his life though often supplemented his income with commercial painting.