For a time, the interest in Per Ekström's painting was relatively cool which changed in the mid-1980s when his work appeared with major Scandinavian paintings at the Nordic Light show in the United States. At an exhibition of Swedish Culture in Paris in 1990 Per Ekstrom was unanimously priased by the audience and press.

Per Ekstrom was born in Upper Segerstad Öland in 1844 and grew up on Alvar with its vast expanses and constantly changing lighting and highlights. He studied at the Art Academy in Stockholm, where he received the Royal Medal of landscape painting in 1875. With a grant from the Free Arts Academy Per Ekstrom went to Paris, France. He settled in Montmartre and began a long period of painting in poverty, but also with happy companionship. "Working in despair" was his motto before the France trip and artist friends admired him for his ingenious ideas and tireless energy, but they were upset about his constant self-criticism. He ventured primarily to the outskirts of the city; Fontainebleau, woods of Boulogne and Chantilly. Only a few paintings can be associated to this first time in France when he rarely dated his works.

The meeting with Camille Corot's painting was crucial for Per Ekström, as well as for Carl Fredrik Hill. The young French-oriented artists reacted against the literary in the older generation of painting and saw the beauty in the everyday landscape. The color and light were to dominate rather than the subject. Per Ekström was one of the pioneers of the new paint, maybe he was the Swede who would create the greatest impression of French Impressionism. He was a genuine open-air artist who also completed his paintings in the open.

Only a few study drawings by Per Ekstrom are preserved; he used brushes directly on the canvas and the paint laid on in patches. 1882 Per Ekström left Paris for the lonely coastal village of Carolles in Normandy, opposite the island of Mont Saint-Michel. The rugged and magnificent scenery with steep cliffs, and shallow sandy beaches spoke to him. Sunset and dusk reminded him of Öland. In Carolles his poverty reached troublesome heights. He was indebted to the landlord and lived for several years more or less isolated from his comrades in Paris. Increasingly he devoted himself to what would become his later art's hallmark, light effects and highlights at sunrise and sunset. He worked hard at his studies on sunrise with the ambition to someday manage to portray a real morning mood. "In Sweden, I would never have been able to teach me to paint the sun - it is so hard to look at it, the air is so clear, but in Normandy, the air is hazy, and there I saw the sun shimmer in the haze and the sea".

In 1887 Per Ekstrom returned to Paris and during the last France-years perfected his technique. The River Seine in the spring drowning out the surrounding landscape so that the trees stood right out of the sunlit water mirror became a recurring motif. In 1889 he was rewarded at last for his many years of hard work and received first class gold medal at the World Exhibition. Ekstrom could from then on successfully sell his work and returned in 1890 to Sweden as an established and recognized artist. Per Ekström said that his life goal was to paint a true, glowing and warm sunshine, "I also will starve to death I'll paint a sun", and light painting became his life's work and he developed it to perfection.