Beatrice Tonnesen – Photographer & Artist

My sister happened to come across these images which sold on eBay in November 2011. This is the first image of BT’s Mars Ware that I have seen. The other depicts BT producing one of her Mars Ware clinker sculptures.

Now, finally, we have an idea what to look for in an actual existing piece. Somewhat larger versions of the images are available in the Catalog Album 18.

The caption included with both says:

Acme News Press Wire photo. Measures 7×9″. Contains stamp and caption on the verso.

Miss Tonnesen’s conception of living creatures on Mars….7-26-1946.

This is part of a collection from a former employee of the UPI in Tribune Towers before this collection was moved to New York. Look for many more great images covering many different topics. These photos have been part of a working archive for many years and have had many different people removing them from folders. So there are varying degrees of wear on the photos.

The funny thing is that these photos were sold from a collection based just a couple of miles from my house. They sold for about $10.

[If these are your photographs, we apologize for pulling them off the web and reproducing them without attribution, but there are no other images available showing this work. Please let us know if these are yours. Actually, we probably would buy them from you.]

'Faith and Loyalty' is signed by 'A. Pope.'

As regular visitors to our blog know, we have been trying to learn the true identity of the artist whose signature “A. Pope” appears on at least two calendar prints that originated as photos by Beatrice Tonnesen. Having been unable to find any verifiable information about an artist by that name who worked  in the early part of the twentieth century, I had been inclined to believe that the name might be a pseudonym for another artist or, possibly, the name of a staff artist working for either the Tonnesen Studio or one of the calendar companies.

Recently, however, Ron Grassmann, newsletter editor for the R. A. Fox Society, collectors of early illustration art, has been kind enough to share some new information with me. Perusing the records of the old American Art Works Company of Coshocton, Ohio, calendar publishers, he found a listing of paintings by A. Pope which were published  as prints between 1918 and 1921.  They are described as follows:

- “Mallards,” published in 1918

- “Out in Front,” depicting a horse and sulky, published in 1918

-  A special publication for the US Cartridge Co. depicting ducks (no date)

- “Fisher on the Grand Banks,” showing a man in an oil skin coat, published in 1921

-”General Pershing,” published in 1921.

Prior to this listing, nothing to my knowledge had ever connected A. Pope  to any print or painting that had not originated as a photo by Tonnesen.  These titles, however, do not suggest subjects that Tonnesen is likely to have photographed.  So, the “A. Pope Mystery” deepens!   Has anyone out there seen any of these prints, which presumably appeared on calendars between 1918 and 1921?  To read earlier posts about A. Pope on this blog, please see:

“Who Was the Artist Behind the A. Pope Signature?”

“Prints Signed ‘A. Pope’ Came from Tonnesen Photos”

“Popular Boy and Dog Image Found in Tonnesen Archive”

Copyright 2011 Lois Emerson

In the period between roughly 1910 and 1925, print  images of “pre-pinup” calendar girls were popular advertising items in America.  Tame by today’s standards, or even the standards of a decade or two later, these photos were artfully composed using flowers and drapes, their styles and themes more romantic than sexual.  Nonetheless, they were considered risque in their time.  Beatrice Tonnesen was a prime provider of these beautiful photographs, which were displayed on calendars mailed on a monthly or bi-monthly basis to advertisers’ mostly-male clientele. Patrons of companies dealing in manufacturing components, farm implements, tools and, occasionally, savings banks, all perceived to be “men’s work,” were likely recipients.

The slideshow at right displays fifteen gorgeous pre-pinup calendar images created by Tonnesen, all but one published by the G-B Company of Joliet, IL. (I believe that would be the Gerlach Barklow Company, a major calendar publisher of the era.)  The first eleven images show undated sample photos used by G-B’s sales staff when calling on advertisers.  These images were part of a 12-month line of monthly mailing calendars titled “Our Old Sweethearts.”  (The month of August is missing from my set.)  All of these sample photos can be traced to Tonnesen.  The last four images show examples of finished calendars produced between 1916 and 1920, also featuring prints that originated as photos by Tonnesen.  It is interesting to note that the 1920 calendar, advertising The State Savings Bank of Ionia, Michigan, published by The Blanchard Co. of Aurora, IL, was probably used as a sample of a finished work.  The information printed in the bottom left of the calendar identifies it as a “Class C (calendar) Mount,” part of a line or theme titled “Flower Girls.”  For those interested in seeing other similar pre-pinups by Tonnesen, four color images published by the Thos. D. Murphy Co. in a 1919-20 series can be found in Album #1 of the Beatrice Tonnesen Catalog. (Click at the top right of this page.)

Copyright 2011 Lois Emerson

Beatrice Tonnesen’s touching images of family life seem to have been published everywhere in the early days of the twentieth century.  We’ve found them in print ads, in newspaper art supplements, on calendars and those old cardboard “church” fans, as well as in fancy frames.  Now we can add self-help books to the list of Tonnesen venues.

It must have been hard to be a woman in the early 1900′s, as the world emerged from the Victorian era.  But, it seems, a wealth of professional advice was available on the nation’s bookshelves.  I have a small collection of vintage “women’s books”, which I gathered because I enjoyed reading their now laughable advice to women on beauty, manners, courtship, marriage, hygiene, health, childcare, romance, sex and more.  One of these is Ideal Womanhood, Guide to Mental and Physical Perfection, by S. Pancoast, MD, Copyright 1901 and 1905 by Thompson & Thomas.

In a work that veers between the romantic idealization of women’s lives and the scholarly presentation of the medical wisdom of the day, Tonnesen was, of course, a perfect choice to illustrate the former. And so, we have Tonnesen’s “Evening Story”- a tender photo of an ideal mother telling her ideal children a bedtime story- sharing a double-page spread with an illustration of an ovum arriving in the fallopian tube!
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Over the past several months, I’ve added three rare, diverse and unusual examples of  Beatrice Tonnesen’s early work.  Hundreds of examples of calendar art derived from her photos are still available to collectors, although her photographic contributions were seldom acknowledged in print.  And relatively fewer signed examples of her illustrated or painted artwork are also still obtainable, with a little effort, in today’s vintage art market. But I’ve had considerably more difficulty finding examples of her early portrait work, her advertising photos and her original paintings.  Recently, however, I’ve been lucky enough to obtain one of each, which I am happy to share in the accompanying slideshow.  In order, from left to right, they are:

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We published a Wikipedia entry for Beatrice Tonnesen.

The slideshow at right features five additions to my collection of prints, making their debuts on this blog.  Each can be shown to have originated as a photo by Beatrice Tonnesen.  From left to right, the images in the slideshow are:

Perfection in Munsingwear - The model believed to be Ziegfeld Follies girl Eva Brady (1899-1934), also known as Eva Grady, appears in a 1926 ad for Munsingwear.  An original photograph showing her in a similar pose is part of the Tonnesen Archive of the Oshkosh Public Museum.  She is dressed identically in both images and holds the same roses.  The white tablecloth, with the butterfly motif, also appears in both images.  To see the OPM image, as well as more photos and information about Eva, please see the post, “Did Tonnesen Photograph a Ziegfeld Girl?” elsewhere on this blog.

The Dairy Maid – This signed print also bears the attribution, “From Original by Tonnesen.”  It appears on a 1926 calendar advertising The Wooster Electric Company, Wooster, Ohio.  This print has been the object of a great deal of speculation by collectors of the work of R. A. Fox, who shared Tonnesen’s Studio for awhile in the 1920′s.  A print by Fox, signed with his pseudonym “Geo. White,” shows this same woman in a slightly different body pose, but, seemingly, with exactly the same face and head!
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