Don Bachardy was born in Los Angeles in 1934. He studied art at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Slade School of Art in London. Bachardy's drawings and paintings are in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the de Young, San Francisco; the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Smithsonian, Washington DC; and the National Portrait Gallery, London. He has published nine books of drawings, including two collaborations with Christopher Isherwood. Bachardy resides in Santa Monica, California, in the home he shared with the late English novelist Christopher Isherwood for over three decades.