Einar Jolin

Johan Einar Jolin was born on 7 August 1890 in Stockholm's Adolf Fredrik parish (a small number of secondary listings show minor date variation; the majority of sources, including Bukowskis, Wolf's Gallery, Nationalmuseum, and MutualArt, confirm 7 August). He came from an artistic family: his father was Professor Severin Jolin (1852 to 1919) and his grandfather the actor John Christopher Jolin (1818 to 1884).

Jolin began his artistic training in 1906 at Tekniska skolan in Stockholm, later known as Konstfack, then studied for about a year from 1907 at Konstnärsförbundets målarskola. He then traveled to Paris and studied at Henri Matisse's Académie Matisse from 1908 to 1914, alongside fellow Swedes Isaac Grünewald and Einar Nerman, returning to Sweden as the First World War began.

In 1915 he took part in "Schwedische Expressionisten" at Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm gallery in Berlin, an exhibition often cited as a landmark moment for Swedish Expressionism. He went on to exhibit repeatedly at Liljevalchs konsthall and the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm over the following decades. Between 1953 and 1955 his work toured the United States; during the tour, in 1954, United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld purchased a painting by Jolin for his office. In 1957 Jolin received the Prince Eugen Medal from the Swedish crown.

Jolin was married three times: to Britt von Zweigbergk from 1921 to 1936, to Joan Clorinda Campbell Kissack from 1943 to 1950, and to singer Tatiana Scheremetiew Angelini from 1952. He died on 29 August 1976 in St George parish, Stockholm, and is buried at Norra begravningsplatsen.

Jolin is consistently described in gallery and museum literature as a leading exponent of Swedish Expressionism, with a decorative, slightly naive touch applied to Stockholm cityscapes, portraits, and still lifes. His inclusion in the 1915 Der Sturm show in Berlin is repeatedly cited as evidence that Nordic painting was directly engaging with the European avant garde of its moment, and his repeated presence at Liljevalchs konsthall and the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts points to sustained institutional acceptance in Sweden. Museum acquisitions across Sweden, Norway, and Denmark reinforce his standing as a significant, if regionally focused, figure of early twentieth century Nordic modernism.

Jolin's clearest documented auction result is a sale of SEK 2,530,000 for one of his paintings at a Bukowskis auction in Stockholm in 2009. The work's exact title and calendar date are not specified in the available public record, and no source describes the sale explicitly as a standing "record," though no higher confirmed price has surfaced since. Below that level, his paintings trade steadily at Nordic auction houses, principally Bukowskis and Auctionet, with typical estimates in the low hundreds of thousands of Swedish kronor.

There is no single gallery or estate that represents Jolin's work today. Instead, his paintings circulate through Nordic secondary-market dealers, including Cadogan Fine Arts and Wolf's Gallery, alongside the major auction houses.

Jolin's birth and death dates are well documented across museum, auction house, and encyclopedic sources, placing him firmly in the historical rather than living market. There is no catalogue raisonne, so provenance and signature, works are typically signed simply "Jolin", carry more weight than they would for an artist with a published scholarly catalogue. His auction record rests on a single, incompletely documented 2009 Bukowskis sale, so it should be treated as a data point rather than a precise benchmark. Because no gallery or estate holds exclusive representation, buyers are likely to encounter his work through several different Nordic dealers and auction houses rather than through one consistent primary-market channel.