Following in their footsteps, he showed an early aptitude for art, developed during time spent hunting and exploring nature while making sketchbooks.

[3][4][5] He travelled to Sweden for the first time when he was fifteen, visiting Bohuslän Province with Wilhelm,[6] who was working as an illustrator for the zoologist Bengt Fredrik Fries (1799–1839).

[7] The following year, he went by himself to work for the Swedish amateur ornithologist, Count Nils Bonde, who had recently subsidized the publication of the multi-volume Svenska Fåglar (Stockholm: C. von Scheele.

[8] After a few months back in Finland, he returned to Sweden where, in 1842, he briefly studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts with the sculptor Johan Niclas Byström (1783–1848).

He made his last trip in 1881, to Orust, visiting Wilhelm, who was also ill. His work became more commercial after this and, in 1886 he produced his best-known painting titled The Fighting Capercaillies.