Lennart Jirlow was born and raised in Stockholm. The unusual surname can be traced back to his grandfather, Oscar Andersson, a naval petty officer who lived on Skeppsholmen. Wanting to stand out from the crowd, he took the name Jirlow after the naval terms 'gir' and 'lov'. At the age of 9, Lennart Jirlow produced his first oil painting, which he managed to sell for 5 sek. After that, he spent his weekly allowance on brushes and pans. He wanted to be an artist, and so he was. In 1952, at the age of 16 and as the youngest student that year, he was admitted to Konstfack.

Two years later, Jirlow went on his first major European trip. He visited Holland to study Rembrandt and then travelled on to Paris, Naples and Florence. In the latter city, he stayed for four full years to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti - the Florentine Academy of Art. In 1958, he returned to Stockholm and later that year held his debut exhibition at galleri Modern Konst on Strandvägen.

During the 1960s, Jirlow continued to exhibit regularly, including in Gothenburg and Stockholm. But more importantly, his first exhibition at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1965 was his real breakthrough. By now, his style had taken on the detailed, colourful and seemingly naïve expression we are used to today, and his motifs revolved around everyday French life: interiors of family-owned bistros, idyllic countryside hotels with flowered balconies, the baker with his baguettes, the chef in his kitchen, the gendarme in his uniform. The combination appealed to the French and the exhibition attracted attention in both the French and Swedish media. A local magazine referred to him as 'the Swedish artist who shows the French France' and Expressen ran a full-page spread, which had great resonance at home.

At the time of his breakthrough in France, Lennart Jirlow had been living in Provence for a year, but his success in Paris led to several exhibitions in the French capital during the 1970s, and it wasn't long before Jirlow established a home and studio there as well. The motifs were mainly about the small pleasures of everyday life: the visit to the restaurant, bistro or wine cellar, the coffee hour in the pergola, the excursion on the archipelago boat, the walk in the park or along the palm-lined promenade. Lennart Jirlow's pictures are full of narrative joy and their lowest common denominator is, almost without exception, the desire for colour and for life.