Önningeby artists' colony

It attracted Finnish and Swedish artists who gathered in the summer to paint landscapes en plein air rather than in their studios.

Formal approaches to landscape painting gave way to more realistic or naturalistic depictions, often reflecting the effects of changing light.

[2] Throughout Europe, artists began to gather each summer in villages where they could work together in pleasant surroundings.

[5] In the mid-1880s, the Finnish Impressionist painter Victor Westerholm from Turku bought Tomtebo, a little summer house beside the Lemström Canal in the village of Önningeby to the northeast of Mariehamn.

While studying in Düsseldorf, he had met Anders August Jansson (1859–1882) from Åland who encouraged him to visit the islands in 1880.

The first group of artists to join Westerholm included Fredrik Ahlstedt and his wife Nina, who both arrived already in May 1886, followed by Aleksander Federley, Hanna Rönnberg and Elin Danielson, all of whom were Finns.

[3] Other painters who joined the group in subsequent years include the Finns Elias Muukka, Elin Alfhild Nordlund, Helmi Sjöstrand and Dora Wahlroos, and the Swedes Ida Gisiko, Anna Wengberg, Eva Topelius, and Edvard Westman.

Thereafter she concentrated increasingly on her short story collections including Från Ålands skär and Brovaktens historier.

It was there he completed his enormous Snöljus (Snow Light) measuring 4.6 by 1.6 metres which he had hoped to exhibit in Paris, but it was refused.

A special exhibition dedicated to Ida Gisiko-Spärck, Anna Wengberg and Elin Alfhild Nordlund was organized at the museum in summer of 2023.