He was European trained and became a leading artist in the mid-Atlantic colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century.

His mother was the sister-in-law of Jesper Swedberg (1653–1735), Bishop of the Diocese of Skara and aunt of religious leader Emanuel Swedenborg.

That same year, he received the first recorded public art commission in the American colonies; he painted The Last Supper.

The painter was able to ignore the rigid conventions of colonial society because Lappawinsoe was a member of a First Nation.

[14][15] The Last Supper by Gustavus Hesselius was the first recorded public art commission in the American colonies.

Commissioned in October 1721, it is displayed on the choir gallery of St. Barnabas Church, Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

[18] It disappeared during the construction of the new Brick Church and did not surface again until it was discovered in a private collection in 1848[16] or 1914, when Charles Henry Hart identified it,[17] depending on which source one follows.