Tammisaari and its surrounding districts are strongly linked to Helene Schjerfbeck's (1862-1946) life. Her roots are intertwined in many ways, both from her mother's and father's side to Tammisaari and its surrounding area. Her great grandfather was the first provincial doctor in the district and her mother's relatives originated from Karjalohja and Vihti. The nearby Sjundby manor was also part of her childhood landscape.

Schjerfbeck was born in Helsinki, where she was given her first art tuition as a young talent. She was soon given scholarships to continue her studies at private academies in Paris. In 1883 she participated in her first Paris salon and recieved a bronze medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1889. Schjerfbeck also painted in Bretagne and Cornwall. During the 1890's she taught at her previous art school in Helsinki until she withdrew to live with her mother in Hyvinkää in 1902, where she developed her modernist painting style. From there she moved to Tammisaari in 1925, a few years after the death of her mother.

Schjerfbeck lived for the longest continuous time in Tammisaari from 1925 until 1941, but even before this she had often painted in the district and its surrounding environment. Especially important, in regard to her art, were the painting spells in Tammisaari during the years 1918 and 1919-1920, which gave birth to outstanding modernist works like "Californian lady I" and "Trees in the wind". In the city, Schjerfbeck searched above all for peace for herself and her painting. The old trees and their luscious crowns interested her in Laivuri park. Being disabled, her garden bench at home (Perspektivet 2, nowadays Raseborgsvägen 2) and the fruit trees close-by were important, and she called the bench her work bench. Hagen and Ramsholmen were her inspiring summer travel destinations, partly because from there, the sea and islands were visible, which meant so much for her, especially in her youth.
     
Models were not as easy to find in Tammisaari as they were in Hyvinkää, but many notable portraits were created of the landlady, landlord, relatives, working-class girls, children from the area and foreigners visiting the city. Schjerfbeck's painting style became sharper, more revealing and the colour scale darkened. The Tammisaari period was all in all a productive time that gave birth to some three hundred works and awarded her with the work peace she had longed for, even though her health had continuously faltered here as well. On the initiative of her art dealer Gösta Stenman, Schjerfbeck started to paint reproductions of her early works like "Convalescent" and  "Seamstress" in 1927. Schjerbeck's lithograph series was also accomplished during the Tammisaari period in 1938.
 

During the Winter and Continuation War, Schjerfbeck had to move away from Tammisaari. She lived in Tenhola, Loviisa retirement home and Nummela Luontola sanatorium. Stenman eventually succeeded in persuading Schjerfbeck to move away from the misery of the Finnish war to the Saltsjöbaden spa hotel in Sweden in February 1944. At Stockholm Saltsjöbaden, Schjerfbeck managed to paint a tremendous climax to her production; portraits, still life compositions, landscapes and a series of self portraits. In January 1946 Helene Schjerfbeck died in Saltsjöbaden. Her ashes were brought to Helsinki and buried in the Hietaniemi cemetery, next to her mother and father.