Two young boys dressed in school uniforms relax near a lake's edge with dramatic trees and foliage in the foreground, and misty reflected mountain in the background. When this work was completed in 1856, the artist Edvard Bergh had been in Geneva under the tutelage of the painter Alexandre Calame. This was part of a long study scholarship grant he was awarded in 1854 that also included stops in Düsseldorf and Italy. It is likely this work depicts a calm summer day at Lake Geneva.

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     Johan Edvard Bergh was born in 1828 in Stockholm, the son of Severin Bergh and Emma Forsström. He attended Maria Læromsskola, then in 1844 went to Uppsala University. He initially studied the natural sciences, but switched to legal studies and graduated with a master's degree in 1849. At first, he worked as a notary at Svea Court of Appeal and Stockholm City Hall.

     His first attempt at art was to enroll at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, which he was rejected. He began exhibiting at the Swedish Art Association where Royal Academy Official Count Mikael Gustaf Anckarsvärd was impressed with Bergh's work and assured him that a new application would be accepted. In 1853 he was awarded the royal medal for his Landscape motifs from the Göta River.

     By 1854, he had qualified for a scholarship that enabled him to take a three-year study trip. He visited Switzerland, Italy and Germany where he studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf under Norwegian romanticist painter Hans Fredrik Gude. He also had lessons from German landscape and seascape painter Andreas Achenbach and the Swiss landscape painter Alexandre Calame.

     In 1857 he established a landscape painting school at the Royal Academy and became a professor there in 1861. He was the commissioner of the Swedish art department at both the 1862 World Exhibition in London, and the 1872 Scandinavian Exhibition in Copenhagen.

     In the late 1860s, he moved away from the more traditional landscape subjects and began focusing on scenes from central Sweden. In 1867 He was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

     The artist is represented in these public institutions:

• National Museum in Stockholm

• Gothenburg Museum

• Copenhagen City Art Museum

• Statens Museum for Kunst (The National Gallery)

• National Museum in Oslo

• Bavarian State Painting Collections

• Upplands Museum

• Hallwyl Museum