Dick Beer was born in London as the youngest of a sibling of five children. His father was an artist and very much appreciated by the English aristocracy as a portrait of famous racehorses. The artistic disposition thus seemed natural, the father was also the one responsible for the education of his sons.

When Beer is fifteen, both parents tragically died and he eventually got a home in Sweden with the priest Laurell in Västergötland. His artistic studies began at Althin's painting school in 1908 and continued at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1910.

But, like so many others, the international art world of Paris attracted, and to the hometown of modern art he moved in 1912. Well in advance he rented a studio in Montparnasse and followed the teaching at the Academy Colarossi and Academy Grande Chaumière.

At the mobilization of the French army in August 1914, Beer enrolled as a volunteer and was admitted to the French Foreign Legion. He was injured the following year by a grenade explosion and then spent some time as a convalescent at Château de Rochefort where he resumes painting.

During the period following World War I, Dick Beer did panting that changed significantly. The previously more impressionistic view of art was now allowed to give way to an influence of the various modernist expressions. Cubism, with the great advocates Braque and Picasso, was now the prevailing style of art and meant a total break with the previous picture conventions.