Recently, I saw a color calendar print, reportedly from 1902, titled “L’Echo” by French artist Edouard Bisson (1856-1939), for sale on the internet. Bisson’s “L’Echo” looked just like a photograph I had seen while visiting the Tonnesen archive of the Oshkosh Public Museum. Perusing my notes from that visit, I found that Tonnesen had titled her photo “Echo”! Tonnesen’s photo bore a 1901 copyright date. “How exciting!” I thought. Maybe I had found another artist who had painted from a photo by Tonnesen – and a French artist at that!

Alas, further research revealed that Bisson’s “L’Echo” appeared earlier as a black and white illustration, titled “Echo”, signed and dated 1891. So, it would appear that it was Tonnesen who was inspired to create her “Echo” by Bisson, not the reverse. This makes sense in the broader context of the calendar art business of the time, during which it is known that publishers asked calendar artists to create paintings that replicated, or at least closely resembled, other already popular works. So, it probably should come as no surprise, that photos of that sort were also in demand. We know that Tonnesen took orders for photos from advertisers and calendar publishers. In all likelihood, she was asked to create a photo counterpart to Bisson’s already popular “Echo.”

The accompanying slideshow contains the following images (L to R): 1902 color calendar print “L’Echo” signed by Bisson. Supplement to Fairbanks Fairy Art Calendar. Image courtesy Nora Okorowski; Tonnesen’s photo titled “Echo”, copyright 1901. Image courtesy Oshkosh Public Museum, Oshkosh WI. All Rights Reserved; Bisson’s “Echo,” signed and dated 1891, published in the March 1896 issue of “Cosmopolitan Magazine.” Image courtesy Nick Vulich.

Copyright 2011 Lois Emerson

Beatrice Tonnesen’s genius for portraying American family life led the major advertisers of her time to clamor for her services. Here’s a gorgeous example of her work, in which Tonnesen’s photographic genius met Thomas Edison’s inventive genius, to capture the pleasure of a favorite family pastime: Listening and dancing to music from the Edison phonograph.

This 1920 calendar was distributed by W.R. Pfefferle, dealer in Edison Phonographs in Dunkirk, Ohio. Everything from the children’s smiling faces to the accompanying poem, beginning “Oh, wondrous Edison…,” conveys the joy of this still novel form of entertainment. (Scroll over the image of the calendar to read the entire poem.) The colored print, titled “Their First Lesson – To the Tune of a New Edison,” is from a painting by W. L. Griffith, and was copyrighted in 1919. The children who modeled for the photo from which Griffith painted were two of Beatrice Tonnesen’s favorite models: William Redmond (1908-1992) and Virginia Waller (1913-2006). (Redmond’s daughter owns a calendar print titled “Their First Lesson,” showing only the left half of the print, with no mention of the Edison.) The chair shown at right appears often in photographs by Tonnesen. As an adult, Virginia Waller wrote a name on a photo, seemingly of the same woman who portrayed the mother, identifying her as “Jean Blackwell.” She was seen very frequently in Tonnesen’s photos during the teens and early twenties, but I have been unsuccessful in positively identifying her or in finding any family members.

As for the other star of this photo print, the old Edison phonograph, it is still a hot item among collectors. Information can be found on several websites, including www.edisonphonos.com and www.intertique.com.

Copyright 2011 Lois Emerson

But I believe Tonnesen produced more than 2000 photos during her long career, and many of those appeared as published prints and advertisements between about 1898 and 1930. Identifying them can be tricky, because she was seldom credited by the publishers. However, by referencing the hundreds of confirmed photos now available to us, as well as the relatively few signed and attributed published prints, we can recognize Tonnesen’s unidentified works, not only by matching them with these known photos, but through her props, models and costumes. As a result, I’ve been able to add scores of new finds to my collection this year. This year’s additions range from prints of beautiful flappers and Victorian mothers, children and pets to an original painting of Tonnesen’s own mother!

There are more to come, but, to start the new year, the slideshow at right shows eight new finds from my collection. The information below describes how I determined they originated as photos by Tonnesen.
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Portraits of beautiful women, glamorous and slightly risque, were hot sellers in the calendar art market of the 1920’s. Prominent among the artists whose work contributed to the craze were Beatrice Tonnesen and R. Atkinson Fox. They sometimes collaborated, as we have seen with Fox’s “Glory of Youth,” painted from a photo by Tonnesen. (See the earlier post on this blog.)

Recently, I found a 1922 Richards-Wilcox Mfg. Co. calendar featuring a black and white photo print of a beautiful young woman, titled “Ellen” on the back of the card. Ellen reminded me of someone else: The lovely “Esmeralda”, a 1926 calendar print from a painting signed “DeForest,” a pseudonym used by Fox. Compare Ellen and Esmeralda, both shown in the image at right.

The Richards-Wilcox Company made door hangers, advertised on monthly calendar cards mailed to their mostly male clientele. Each card featured an attractive woman, and many of the titles, captions and write-ups would be considered sexist by today’s standards . The series dates back at least as far as 1908 and ran at least through the early 1920’s. I have been collecting these cards because they feature a number of Tonnesen models, and a few of the images can be positively identified as Tonnesen’s work.
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This color print has been found titled "Safely Guarded" and signed A. Pope on a 1927 calendar. It started as a photo by Tonnesen titled "On Guard." 16-20- Tonnesen Pope Emerson 1920-30

Recently, however, I purchased a 1927 salesman’s sample calendar featuring A. Pope’s “Safely Guarded” which came from a photo by Tonnesen, previously titled “On Guard.”  Under the print, the following information appeared:

(c)1924 Robert Chapman Co. NY.  Reproduced from the original by A. Pope.
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