[1] David Wallin is best known for his oil paintings with genre motifs and idealized images of nude women in atmospheric landscapes, where he stressed the affinity of human and nature.

He also painted tender depictions of mother and child, and a series of portraits of famous Swedes and genres as figures, landscapes and nudes, still lifes and religious images.

David Wallin grew up on a farm, Varby, in Östra Husby parish, a locality on Vikbolandet, which had been in the family since the 17th century.

The home was strictly religious, and his father turned to the Bible and the writings of Carl Olof Rosenius for daily guidance.

[3][4] He worked as a store clerk and as a painter's apprentice in Norrköping 1893–1896, simultaneously attending lectures at a technical evening college.

In 1898 Wallin was admitted at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, where his fellow students included Karl Isakson, Ivar Arosenius and John Bauer.

In 1903–1904 he studied briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Colarossi in Paris, where his teacher was the Norwegian naturalist painter, illustrator, author and journalist Christian Krohg.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists.

The subject matter of David Wallin's earliest independent paintings was associated with his native soil, for instance his "Family Estate" (1898).

It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for using contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional objects such as the human body.

Chiaroscuro originated during the Renaissance as drawing on coloured paper, where the artist worked from this base tone towards light, with white gouache, and dark, with ink, bodycolour or watercolour.

Wallin's portrait of Mrs. Carin Lidman shows a shimmering young womanhood which is reproduced in richly nuanced, scented colors.

In springtime in 1912 Wallin and his wife Elin were the parents of four children, four girls born in 1906, 1907, 1909 and 1912, so it was natural that David's motifs often were the mother-child theme.

Wallin was first introduced to modern contemporary painting in Paris, where he visited André Lhote and Kees van Dongen.

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.

Wallin exhibited several compositions at "Le Salon (Paris)" in addition to "Portrait of Elin", "Au Soleil", a nude on the shore, bathed in light, and "L’air du printemps", painted in Italy in 1910.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists.

The décoration of the wedding room at the Stockholm Court House had been preceded of three competitions (1912–1914) which had attracted a big number of artists of the time.

The fight for the decoration of the wedding room in the new Stockholm Court House became one of the most dramatic in the Swedish history of monumental art.

His pictures of children are often characterized by a fragile fairy tale atmosphere, such as "A Little Bud on a Green Meadow" (1914) and "Story Time in the Garden" (1918).

August Brunius was responsible for the most favourable reviews in which he proclaimed Wallin a very special force to be reckoned with within Swedish art, both in terms of his compositions and as the creator of a world of his own.

"Ragnhild", 73 x 79 cm, can be counted as a portrait, but it is sooner a composition, where the artist with inspiration and accuracy has brought about a fascinating evening lighting.

[17] The portrait was created during a very active period of the artist's life, when he was inspired of magnificent nature in harmony with his inner emotionally flows.

An old man is sitting by a tree trunk and a young girl is going with springy steps on the forest road, showing the artist's typically philosophizing presentation of the motif.

Medals were awarded in five categories (architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture) for works inspired by sport-related themes.

The sketches of David Wallin, which are interesting from a painterly point of view and often exquisite, are part of his long and tireless career as an artist.

In his landscapes as in his nudes the intense, romantic feeling transforms mountains, rivers, forests and meadows into outpouring of subjective moods.

Among the most famous early oil portraits, often chiaroscuro, are the portraits of the artist Axel Fahlkrantz (1851–1925) (1904),[21] the poet and writer Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1904), the university president and architect Viktor Adler (1907),[22] the founder of the telephone company Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson Lars Magnus Ericsson and wife, the founder of the color company Wilhelm Becker (1904), Mrs. Granberg (1904), the young girl Barbro Gyllenhammar (1904), Portrait of the Publisher Saxon (1907), and the count and fellow artist, professor at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm Count Georg von Rosen (1908), depicting meditating in front of a painting.

Among the most famous portraits in oil of prominent Swedes later on are Mrs Waldenström (1914), the professor, mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler (1920), the author, phonetician, philologist and professor Fredrik Wulff (1922), the professor of literature and cultural history Henrik Schück (1923), the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (1925), the councilman, director general and politician Bo von Stockenström (1926), the wife of Bo von Stockenström Anna von Stockenström (1926), Countess Magnus Brahe (1927), the professor, philosopher and jurist Axel Hägerström (1929), the doctor and Nobel Laureate Gustaf Dalén (1929),[23] the general and politician Carl Gustaf Hammarskjöld (1930), the lord mayor in Örebro and president at Örebro Savings Bank Victor Schneider (1934),[24][25] the professor and surgeon Abraham Troell (1938), the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs in the National Unity Government Christian Günther (1939) and the actor and prominent opera singer John Forsell.

He strove to meld the intimate and the monumental in lyrically colored moods – which meant that he gradually distanced himself from modern trends in painting.