Beatrice Tonnesen – Photographer & Artist

Collectors treasure the beautiful color prints found on advertising calendars of  the early twentieth century, known as “The Golden Age of Illustration.”  But, as we know, many of those beautiful illustrations started as equally beautiful black and white photos by Beatrice Tonnesen and others.  Unfortunately, because the calendar companies that published the color prints usually [...]

[update edited 07/15/10] These images represent the complete group of the scans that I did on my second visit to the Winneconne Historical Society. The entire contents of the Winneconne Historical Society collection of Beatrice Tonnesen images has now been digitized and is displayed in large versions in Album 15 of the Catalog on this [...]

Editor’s Note: There are new developments in the story of the “Glory of Youth” photo .  A reader who has an original of that photo has identified the model as her grandmother, Beulah Clark Dunn.  Interestingly, like Vera Hedderman whose story is told below, she was born in 1903 and won newspaper acclaim for her [...]

If you’ve read Geoff Johnson’s feature on Beatrice Tonnesen in the current (March) issue of Chicago Magazine, or listened to his WBEZ interview, you know that we have learned a great deal about Tonnesen’s work from the descendants of Tonnesen’s models.  In most cases, it seems, a great-aunt or a grandmother, or maybe a dimly-remembered [...]

The associated slideshow contains all of the photos of Beatrice Tonnesen that are contained in the Beatrice Tonnesen Catalog.