He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Thorsten and Amy Anderson Sellin. He attended Quaker schools. As a teenager, he studied privately with painter Frank B. A. Linton, a former student of Thomas Eakins. He spent a year in Sweden in the atelier of painter Otte Sköld. He received a bachelor's degree, 1952 magna cum laude, and a master's degree in art history, 1956, from the University of Pennsylvania.Obituary: "Dr. David Sellin C’52 Gr’68", The Pennsylvania Gazette (University of Pennsylvania alumni magazine), November/December 2006. He returned to Stockholm to study for a year at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and studied for two years in Rome as a Fulbright scholar.David Sellin, Ph.D., Thomas Eakins and His Fellow Artists at the Philadelphia Sketch Club, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia Sketch Club, 2001, p. 23.
