Johan Tobias Sergel was born in Stockholm in 1740. He studied sculpting and art in Paris and Rome, and lived in Italy for twelve years. He returned to Stockholm in 1779 and continued to sculpt some of the most famous statues of his time. Apart from making sculptures, Johan Tobias Sergel was also inspired by English artists like Rowlandson and Gillray to make sequential stories, which can be seen as early forms of comics. He often teamed up with fellow artist Carl August Ehrensvärd, with whom he even lived together for a while during the 1790s, producing a number of satirical stories and depictions of mundane life, often showing disdain for the Catholic church, as can be seen in these pictures from the story 'Prästen och Flickan' ('The Priest and the Girl').
