Önningeby

The Finnish painter Victor Westerholm settled at Önningeby in Jomala and from 1886 drew a group of Finnish and Swedish artists around him who summered there for a decade, painting the Åland landscape and each other. A museum in the village holds work by the colony and material on how they lived. The countryside they painted, low fields and rock and water, is largely unchanged. The colony broke up in the mid-1890s, and most of its members went on to work elsewhere in the Nordic countries.

Background

Önningeby lies about 7 km (4 mi) from Mariehamn, to the northeast, and had 214 inhabitants in 2014. At its southern edge, Lemström's canal, built in 1882, divides Jomala from Lemland and greatly cut the travel time between Turku and Mariehamn. The painters came to work en plein air, outdoors rather than in the studio, and the colony gathered around Tomtebo, the summer house that Victor Westerholm bought in 1884. Lodging the visiting artists brought the villagers extra work and income. Tomtebo is still the Westerholm family's summer house. Since 1992 Ålands Konstmuseum has shown a permanent exhibition of the colony's work, and a monument to Westerholm, designed by Wäinö Aaltonen in 1960, stands in a park near the canal.

Source: Wikipedia, "Önningeby"

What you'll find

• The colony's work - paintings by the Finnish and Swedish artists who summered here.
• Victor Westerholm - the painter whose settling drew the group together.
• The museum - the collection and the record of how the colony worked.
• The landscape - the fields, rock and water the group painted.

When to go

May to September is the season; the museum closes in winter. Summer light is what drew the painters and is still the point. Rainy days are busiest inside.

Before you go

The museum is small and hours are limited even in season. Labelling is mainly in Swedish. There is little else in the village itself.

Nearby

Mariehamn is south, and Ramsholmen is west.

Key facts