Ellen Favorin attended painting schools in Helsinki and Stockholm and, like many of her female colleagues, continued her studies in Munich, Düsseldorf and at the Academie Julien in Paris.

She became part of Victor Westerholm's (1860–1919) artist colony in Önningeby on the island of Åland - an artist colony that numbered around 30 followers, many of them women. Favorin focused on landscape painting, often in small formats and especially on motifs from the Finnish archipelago - just like the small work we have here in the theme auction - and she later also worked with photography.