The Austrian–Swedish artist Erich Albert Lamm grew up in Vienna, and studied art under Alois Delug and Christian Griepenkerl at the Akademie der bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) from 1900 to 1904, and then under Heinrich Knirr at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Munich from 1905 to 1906. He established his own school of painting in Vienna in 1914 and served as an official front-line artist during the First World War. His paintings were exhibited at the Vienna Secession exhibitions of 1909, 1912, 1913 and 1914.

In 1921 he undertook a study trip to Skåne in Sweden, during which he completed a number of portrait commissions, and subsequently visited Sweden regularly. He participated in an art exhibition organised by the Austrian government, which was shown at the Gothenburg Art Museum and in Copenhagen in 1934. It was in that year that he and his wife Elisabeth settled in Sweden and became Swedish citizens in 1937, at which time Erich changed his name to the Swedish equivalent Erik.

In Sweden he participated in a number of collective exhibitions, exhibiting separately at the Neue Galerie in Vienna in 1931, while in Sweden he had solo exhibitions at the Sturegalleriet in Stockholm and the Skånska Konstsalongen in Malmö. His output included still lifes, portraits, nudes, and landscapes from the Austrian Tyrol and the Swedish mountains and west coast.

As well as painting, Lamm was also a competent engraver, producing a portfolio of six etchings based on German composers as well as the erotic portfolio we show here.