John Lavalle was born in Nahant, Massachusetts in 1896. He attended St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire before attending Harvard. During World War I, he served as a bomber pilot with the Second Oxford Detachment of the British Royal Air Force. Later, Lavalle studied in Paris at the Académie Julian. Upon returning to the US, he enrolled at the Boston Museum School and established himself as a painter of society portraits in the 1920s and 30s. When the United States entered World War II, he began working as a camouflage artist for the 12th Air Force. His watercolors and landscapes are held in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Harvard Art Museums.