Sandberg is famous for his many portraits of intellectuals and civil servants in the early 19th century. He also painted vernacular and historical subjects, including scenes from the history of King Gustav Wasa. Fleeing from the Danish soldiers, the nobleman Gustav Eriksson Wasa hid among the farmers in Dalarna in 1520–21. A later anecdote relates how Sven Elfsson’s wife in Isala saved him from being discovered by hitting the future king with a baker’s peel and driving him out of the cabin, leading the Danish swordsmen to assume he was a farm labourer. The painting is signed 1831, the year Sandberg embarked on his series of frescoes from the history of Gustav Wasa in the Wasa choir of Uppsala Cathedral. The artist’s portrayals of the 16th century are based on Anders Fryxell’s Berättelser ur svenska historien, the first volume of which was published in 1823.