Hyvinkää Art Museum’s collections include three larger donated collections: Karin and Carl Eric Sonck’s art collection, the collection of Kaapo Wirtanen’s estate and Flora Laurell’s collection.
Karin and Carl Eric Sonck’s art collection
The most central of these collections is Karin and Carl Eric Sonck’s art collection, which includes a total of 222 paintings and drawings by artist Yrjö Saarinen (1899–1958). A close friend of Yrjö Saarinen’s, Professor Carl Eric Sonck accumulated a large collection of Saarinen’s works over the years. Donated to Hyvinkää Art Museum in 1978, these works now form the heart of the museum’s collections.
Yrjö Saarinen: Dancing Paris, 1930, poster paint on canvas, picture: Ella Tommila
The collection of Kaapo Wirtanen’s estate
The collection of Kaapo Wirtanen’s estate includes oil paintings, pastel drawings and other drawings by this artist. The collection includes realistic landscape paintings and portraits painted during Wirtanen’s (1886–1959) time in Paris in the 1910s and in his later years in the 1940s. After his return to Finland, the artist, who lived abroad for long periods in the 1920s, spent summers in Hyvinkää, in the area of Kytäjä Manor, owned by his brother-in-law, where he painted the milieu of the manor and the surrounding countryside.
Kaapo Wirtanen, Parisian Horses, 1910, oil painting, The collection of Kaapo Wirtanen’s estate, picture: Ella Tommila
Flora Laurell’s collection
Flora Laurell (1908–1997) was a Hyvinkää-based friend and patron of arts, from whom Hyvinkää Art Museum received a small collection consisting of seven pieces as a bequest in 1997. The works in Flora Laurell’s collection include the bronze sculpture Head of a Girl by Wäinö Aaltonen, a still life depicting flowers by Ester Helenius, known for her use of colours, and Albert Edelfelt’s sketch for his famous painting Kuningatar Blanka (Queen Blanche).
Albert Edelfelt, Queen Blanche, water colour (sketch), picture: Ella Tommila