He journeyed to Africa, India and the West Indies, but favored the countries around the Mediterranean Sea, especially the island of Capri where he also exhibited his works.

He grew up on Kammakargatan 45 in the Jolinska Huset (Jolin Residence),[1] a three-story townhouse with a garden, built by his grandfather.

For interior paintings, he often selected props from things in the house – Gustavian and Empire style furniture, Chinese embroideries and East Indian tableware.

[10] Jolin joined the inner circle at the school, a group of Scandinavian artists who would later become known as De Unga [sv] (The Young Ones) or 1909 års män (The Men of 1909).

[19] Together with Grünewald and Leander Engström, Jolin joined the Matisse Academy, where their friends from Stockholm had already been accepted as pupils.

[30] Jolin had planned to return to Paris the following summer, but the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, forced him to reconsider his decision.

With the road to France closed, he decided to stay in Stockholm,[30] and managed to obtain a studio workshop on Fiskargatan 9,[31] in the so-called "Scandalous House" [a] near Katarina Church in the southern part of town.

[34] At the end of that year he was visited by Herman Gotthardt, a wholesaler from Malmö, who had recently taken up art collecting as a hobby.

[35] He studied Jolin's numerous works and, as at this time the artists sold very few paintings, it came as a surprise to him when Gotthardt bought 16 canvases.

Jolin received seven thousand crowns (sek) for the paintings, and at home the same evening he was able to show his parents the money from his first major sales, saying: "Look here, this is what I earned today".

[50] The Swedish writer Ivar Lo-Johansson, who had a studio apartment at number 21, described life in the area thus: "In a part of a street, no longer than three hundred meters, everything existed.

[67] Although influenced by Matisse, the Oriental art that Jolin discovered at Musée Guimet was even more important to his style.

[14][25] Jolin's style deviates from that of the traditional Expressionists, in that he simplifies his motifs in an almost primitive way, painting an imagined reality rather than raw emotions.

[29] Both Jolin and Dardel were inspired by French naïvists, not just by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but also by Séraphine Louis who lived in Sentis[69] and Wilhelm Uhde, a specialist in naïve painting.

Jolin also appreciated the cultivated and sophisticated, older painting, and was deeply impressed during his visits to the Louvre, where he was inspired by the works of masters such as Rubens, Watteau and Chardin.

Jolin was tired of Isaac Grünewalds increasingly dominant role among the young Swedish artists at that time, a sentiment shared by GAN.

GAN always objected to Jolin's choice to include colors such as pearl gray and light purple or violet in his paintings.

[79] Later on, still life featuring Oriental porcelain, preferably displayed on a reflecting mahogany tabletop,[80] became a more common motif.

[1][82] In the 1930s, Nils Palmgren, named a group of Swedish painters "The Purists",[83] an expression originally coined by the French artists Amedée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier.

Palmgren referred to painters such as Torsten Jovinge, Erik Byström, Wilhelm Wik and Helge Linden.

But, according to Palmgren, Einar Jolin could also be called a Purist since he constantly stressed that colors should be kept pure, contours clear and the composition of the motif orderly.

His composition of the motif involved putting details against big blocks of cool pink, sheer blue, ivory turquoise and emerald, thereby creating a populated setting.

[71] Jolin was a strong advocate for the architectural and aesthetic preservation of the capital, as is written in his draft for a pamphlet called Mot strömmen (Against the Tide).

[90][91] Jolin wanted to bring out the beautiful and the genuine in the cityscape, as well as restore, what he considered to be distorted parts of the city, to their former glory.

[94] By the middle of the 20th century, his focus shifted from the cityscape to other motifs such as chinoiserie settings,[95] but in his youth,[96] he and his friends from his years in Paris found inspiration in Stockholm and its surroundings.

[33] Einar Jolin said of his 1957 retrospective exhibition at the Liljevalchs konsthall: Throughout his life he continued to paint romanticized exteriors of Stockholm, whether in spring sunshine or winter haze, the city was always depicted as beautiful and unspoiled.