Gustaf Tenggren was born in Vastergotland, Sweden. His early schooling and artistic influences were solidly grounded in Scandinavian techniques, motifs and myths. At the age of 20 he succeeded John Bauer as the illustrator for Bland Tomtar och Troll (Among Elves and Trolls), a famous Swedish Christmas annual for children. He illustrated the fairy tales by Swedish artists in the annual from 1917 through 1926 - the last six years from America.
During this period he also illustrated an Andersen's Fairy Tales for a publisher in Denmark. In 1920 he immigrated to the U.S., to Cleveland and then in 1922 to New York. By 1923 he was hard at work breaking into the American children's book market - the heyday of the grand illustrated books of Rackham and Nielsen having passed before his time.
In 1923 in America, his work appeared in Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales, D'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, A Boy of the Lost Crusade, The Christ Story for Boys and Girls, and Heidi, with a Grimm's Marchenschatz being published in Germany. 1924 through 1928 saw a steady stream of books: The Good Dog Book, The Red Fairy Book, Peggy's Playhouses, A Dog of Flanders, a "1925 Fairy Tale Calendar" for Beck Engraving Co, a dust jacket for a novel Quest, Small Fry and the Winged Horse, Juan and Juanita, and Dickey Byrd. His illustrations appeared in Good Housekeeping in a column "by ELAINE, Entertainment Editor" and in advertisements for the International Silver Co, Heisey's Glassware, Elgin Watches, and he even provided illustrations for some few stories.
1932 Tenggren illustrated Sven the Wise and Svea the Kind, which only had two color plates but they were gorgeous. Both this title and The Ring of the Niblung featured his pen work. His most atypical work to date occurred in a non-fiction children's book entitled How They Carried the Goods, in which he was called upon to paint pictures of many things, including an airplane. A few other books follow until 1936, one unusual example being Seldom and the Golden Cheese, with more pen and ink work. About this time he also painted the dust wrapper for a famous Pearl S. Buck novel, The Good Earth.
In 1936, Tenggren went to work for Walt Disney and emerged from the experience in 1939 with a very different approach to art. Not four years after his elegant contributions to Disney, he explodes back upon the book market with The Poky Little Puppy.
The Forties and Fifties saw an endless stream of Tenggren books: The Tenggren Tell-It-Again Book, The Tenggren Story Book, Tenggren's Cowboys and Indians, Tenggren's Thumbelina, Tenggren's Jack and the Beanstalk, Tenggren's Mother Goose, etc., as well as a mob of Little Golden Books from The Biggest Bear to Little Black Sambo. King Arthur from 1961 was his last book.
(source: http://www.bpib.com/tenggren.htm)