At the same time he attended the Helsinki University Art School, where he was taught drawing by Fredrik Ahlstedt and Albert Gebhard.

He spent 1901 and 1902 in Munich at the Bavarian Royal Academy of Art, studying under the animal-painter H. Zugel and the portraitist Ludwig von Herterich.

In 1909, he co-founded the Septem Group of colorists with Alfred William Finch, Magnus Enckell, Yrjö Ollila, Mikko Oinonen, Juho Rissanen, and Ellen Thesleff.

Their inspiration came from the 1904 Impressionist and Neo-impressionist Franco-Belgian Exhibition in Helsinki that included works by Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross.

It adopted a positivist view of life, being a development of the tradition of figure painting where the male nude is a symbol of power shown against the sea, the sun and forces of nature.