Erik Tryggelin was born in Stockholm in 1878. He studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Art (Konstakademien) and then spent a year and a half studying in Paris at the Académie Colarossi (1911-1913). There he was exposed not only to Impressionism and Post Impressionism but also to the exciting modern art being produced at the time such as Expressionism and Cubism.
Tryggelin's style however, remained in the style of Realism and Impressionism his whole life and he experimented little with contemporary artistic trends. Tryggelin mainly painted views of his native Stockholm,both of the city itself and the beautiful surrounding Archipelago, and of Vadstena, an historic medieval city in the west of Sweden. A critic described him as 'the forgotten idyllic painter.' His watercolours and oils are highly atmospheric, and he had a gift for capturing the unique light of the north.
Tryggelin was also a talented photographer. His photographs document city life and are now available in the archives of Nordiska Museum in Stockholm and Stockholm City Museum. Both his photography and his paintings of restaurants, horse drawn carriages and trams riding through the city brilliantly capture contemporary life and are an invaluable documentation of life in Sweden in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.