Alfred Jansson was of Swedish descent but immigrated to America to continue his development as an artist. He lived in Chicago for many years and thrived among local Swedish-American communities. For around 20 years, he exhibited regularly at the Art Institute of Chicago.

He specialised in landscape painting and had a keen fondness for the natural world. Many of his views were drawn from the Chicago region but he also returned to Sweden to paint occasionally.

In around 1916, the Fine Arts Journal noted that “His work is imbued with poetry,” and “carries that rich quality which is so much loved by the devotees of the modern landscape school.”