Looking at the well-known painting "Hipp, hip, hurray" by the Danish painter Peder Severin Krøyer, one man in particular stands out in the merry circle of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian artists. It is the mustachioed character head Oscar Björck, who rises with his filled champagne glass to toast with all the others in the merry circle, which is the inner circle in the circle of the "Skagen painters". But who is this Oscar Gustaf Björck? In January 1860, the future painter and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden's capital Stockholm was born. Björck's father once worked as a gold miner in Sweden's dense forests, and so a certain gold-digger gene, paired with excessive creativity and artistic talent, was to accompany Oscar Gustaf Björck throughout his life. At the age of 17, Oscar Gustaf Björck passed the entrance examination to Stockholm's Academy of Arts. Here he studied in the master class with Edvard Perséus, who was first awarded a royal medal for his paintings and then appointed court superintendent to the Swedish King Oscar II.

Björck, an art student, was considered to be particularly talented and as a result he was awarded a travel scholarship that took him to many places of fine art. These included Paris with an already world-famous community of artists, Bavaria's historic royal metropolis of Munich, Venice with its world-famous art treasures, "eternal" Rome - and Skagen at the northernmost point of Jutland, in front of which the North Sea and the Baltic Sea meet. Just as famous as the maritime nature all around, Skagen is famous for the paintings of various painters, such as already in Björck's time Peder Severin Krøyer and wife Marie. Anna Ancher and Holger Drachmann had also become much respected representatives of Skagen painting with their works.

Soon Oscar Gustaf Björck was accepted into the circle of Skagen painters. Together in a studio with P. S. Krøyer, he painted a whole series of motifs from the maritime environment of Skagen - an environment that also fascinated with the proverbial special Skagen light. At some point, however, the young painter, who was not yet thirty years old, was drawn back to Stockholm, which had always been a center of Scandinavian culture. Here Björck advanced to the renowned portrait painter.

Oscar Gustaf Björck painted numerous portraits of crowned heads such as King Oscar II in full regalia, but also of Prince Eugene Napoleon of Sweden and Crown Prince Gustaf, who was King of Sweden from the 1950-ies as Gustav VI Adolf. Björck also portrayed Nobel Prize winners, writers and other civic personalities. When the master painted naked nymphs and fauns to decorate the Stockholm Opera House, he sparked a heated moral discussion between the Swedish parliament, art historians, and Swedish clerics, but the dust soon settled. Björck was appointed a full member of the Swedish Academy of Art, where he later held a professorship and a chair. As a curator, Oscar Gustaf Björck was in charge of the Stockholm Art Exhibition of the late 1890s, as well as a subsequent Baltic exhibition and expositions of Swedish art in London. Björck was married to a daughter of the renowned painter and curator at the National Museum Johan Christoffer Boklund. Oscar Gustaf Björck's grave is located at Solna Cemetery in Stockholm.