Önningeby artists colony

The Önningeby artists colony (Swedish: Önningebykolonin) was founded in 1886 by Victor Westerholm, a Finnish landscape painter, who had a summer house in the village of Önningeby on the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea. It attracted Finnish and Swedish artists who gathered in the summer to paint landscapes en plein air rather than in their studios. Many of the participating artists were women.

In the 1870s, European artists began to develop an interest in painting outdoors 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. Throughout Europe, artists began to gather each summer in villages where they could work together in pleasant surroundings. Artists from across Scandinavia met above all in Skagen in the north of Denmark from the early 1880s, forming a group which became known as the Skagen Painters.

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. In 1885, he exhibited paintings at the Helsinki salon including October day on Åland. From 1886, he invited his artist friends to join him there each summer to paint in the open air. Their works included marine landscapes and village scenes as well as portraits of the local inhabitants. They also painted each other.

Many of the artists who painted in Önningeby were women. The first group of artists to join Westerholm included Fredrik Ahlstedt and his wife Nina, Aleksander Federley, Hanna Rönnberg and Elin Danielson, all of whom were Finns. The Swedish painter J.A.G. Acke also participated the first year, becoming one of the group's most important figures returning each year until 1892 when interest began to fade. 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. Ellen Favorin and Amélie Lundahl visited in 1889.

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