Oscar Kleineh was born in Helsinki into a well-to-do bourgeois family with strong international influences. His father, Louis Kleineh, of German descent, ran successful restaurants and hotels, and the family’s summer villa by the sea early on sparked Oscar’s fascination with shipping and distant horizons.

After studying at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society, he continued his education in Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe with Hans Gude, and in St. Petersburg under the marine painter Alexei Bogolyubov – a period that laid the foundation for his classically academic marine painting.

Back in Helsinki, Kleineh depicted coastal towns and marine views with topographical accuracy. Despite his artistic successes, his European-influenced subjects were perceived as foreign in a Finland that was then celebrating the national landscape. To find new impulses, he travelled to Norway (in 1879 and 1886), where the coast and fjord landscapes inspired several of his most atmospheric works.

During the 1880s, Kleineh was influenced by French plein air painting during his stays in France, Brittany, and Normandy, but he retained his studio-based method and his interest in the drama of the sea and the variations of light.