Born in Ennis, Texas, John Enser became a painter known for landscapes, especially those painted in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. He lived primarily in New England but traveled regularly to Texas and Mexico and made a trip to England and Belgium in 1938.

Enser became an influential teacher with a career at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts; the School of Practical Arts and Letters at Boston University; and the Vesper George School.

As a young man, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and with Jose Arpa. He was also a newspaper illustrator there as well as an etcher.

In 1929, he moved to Lexington, Massachusetts and became friends with Herman Dudley Murphy (1867-1945). In Boston, he exhibited oils and watercolors with the Guild of Boston Artists and also exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Witte Museum in San Antonio, and at Vose Galleries in Boston.

In 1962, he moved to New Ipswich, New Hampshire, where he continued painting and teaching until he died in 1968.