Oskar Bergman was born in a working class neighborhood in Stockholm. Destined to become an artist, his father’s early death forced Oskar to work at the age of thirteen. Attending evening classes, Bergman never enrolled in the Art Academy and is considered autodidact. Instead, he made several study trips around Europe. Bergman stuck to his naturalist style despite the prevailing abstract and non-figurative trends. Deeply inspired by Japanese woodcuts and symbolism, along with early Renaissance painting, Bergman applied these stylistic ideals to the natural world around him. Seemingly inspired by the realism of photography, his motifs arrive from an enchanted place.

Around 1900, Bergman sojourned in Saltsjöbaden, visits offered to him by his loyal patrons Signe Maria and Ernest Thiel. Later, Bergman would visit Thiel on the island Fjärdlång in the Stockholm archipelago, but most influential is Djurgården; home of his memorable childhood summers in nature. Portraying forests and solitary trees, roads and landscapes in different seasons, the Nordic landscape and its mythic mood is encapsulated in these jewellike drawings. By 1904–strongly influenced by Caspar David Friedrich–his artistic career truly began. Revealing the silence of nature in both black and white and colorful depictions, Bergman’s prolific and long career places him among Swedish most established artists.