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Beauty’s Charms Restoration

Beatrice Tonnesen - Beauty's Charms

Beauty’s Charms

A restoration of Tonnesen’s Beauty’s Charms is now available through the publisher’s website. Beauty's Charms was found on an advertising calendar dated 1919 for The Best Mfg. Co., New Haven, Conn. It can be identified as the work of famed artist/photographer Beatrice Tonnesen (1871 – 1958), a major contributor of calendar art from about 1900 – 1930, during the Golden Age of Illustration. The dress and the model are seen in other works contained in archives of Tonnesen's work, and this image is shown hanging in Tonnesen's Chicago studio in a photo dated 1920.

The original calendar image from which this print was produced appears on page 116 of The Secret Source: Beatrice Tonnesen and the Calendar Art of the Golden Age of Illustration.

The restoration is 13?x19?, limited edition, numbered, and dated, with a description at the bottom. It is printed on Epson UltraSmooth Fine Art Paper with Epson UltraChrome K3 inks to last more than a century.

Please use the Contact link for any questions.

[Click image for larger version.]

The Art Restorationist’s Dilemma

We received an an email through this site’s contact link from Micheal Donaldson. Micheal left a non-functioning return email, but I’d like to address the note here. It said:

I am a art Restorationist, i have seen a lot of this type of work disappear, because the owners clung to[o] tightly to it with water marks and flash player security.

If you really want this work to survive you, which is so needed in a world gone crazed on death and decay, you should make the largest and best quality 1.5 MB files for down loading, so the smile Beatrice intended for everyone goes out all over the net and shines on a world gone obsessed with death.

I replied, but it came back undelivered:

Hi Michael – Thanks for your note and your interest in Beatrice Tonnesen. I am an art restorationist also, but by hobby. I keep the master digital database of Beatrice Tonnesen images. It might be a bit messy, but it’s there. Lois and I have been working on BT for about seven years now, and we have dozens of terabytes recovered. Easily more than a thousand hours of image cleanup. There are no negatives, so all the images are reproduced from discovered photographs, paintings, calendars, or newspapers. Like any commercial studio, restored Beatrice Tonnesen images are under copyright and available for license. I encourage you to consider this route for disseminating our mutual interest in Beatrice Tonnesen.

Please contact me at any time.

Sincerely,

Sumner

Vintage Indian Maiden Prints: How Many Were Created in Tonnesen's Studio?

Wabano
Picture 1 of 10

This illustration by Homer Nelson appeared on a 1925 calendar as part of Brown & Bigelow's "Indian Heroine Series". The source photo by Beatrice Tonnesen was found at the Winneconne (WI) Historical Society. The illustrated detail of the headband is, more or less, faithful to the photo. Mary Simmonds O'Grady (1896-1976) is believed to have been the model.

Only four of the many, hugely popular vintage calendar prints of Indian maidens have been confirmed to have been created by Beatrice Tonnesen. They are “Whispering Waters” and “Winona”, both signed by Tonnesen; “Wabano” (Dawn of Woman), by Homer Nelson, whose source photo resides in the Tonnesen Archive of the Winneconne (WI) Historical Society; and “YooHoo!” posed by a frequent Tonnesen model and attributed to Tonnesen on a 1925 calendar. All of those images, and their stories, are gathered together in our ebook, The Secret Source: Beatrice Tonnesen and the Calendar Art of the Golden Age of Illustration, available through Amazon.com.

However, I've always felt that Tonnesen was responsible for many more of the posed photographs of beautiful women dressed as Native Americans and illustrated by the nation's top calendar artists, in the rush to satisfy the public appetite for the genre in the 1910s, 20s and 30s.

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