Born in Malmo, Sweden, Roslin came to Stockholm in 1736 as a student of the court painter Georg Engelhard Schröder. In the early 1740s, he returned to Scania and painted portraits of the Skåne nobility. One of them, Count Nils Julius Lewenhaupt, opened the way to international success for the young artist in 1744 by arranging so that he became known as a painter to the Margrave of Bayreuth court.

Roslin's paintings from the early period in the south of Sweden do not testify to any exceptional talent, they are professional and powerfully designed, but the influence of the teacher Schröder makes itself felt by a certain conventional stiffness. But then he came abroad, broke out of its shell, drank fresh impressions and quickly develop...