Tonnesen's photos: Advertisers often used them with little or no alteration; publishers often assigned staff illustrators to embellish or paint them using water color, pastels or oils; and independent artists painted from them, capitalizing on Tonnesen's talent for posing and composition, in order to meet the demands of the rapidly expanding art publishing trade. Two of the era's more successful calendar artists, R. Atkinson Fox (1860–1935) and Homer S. Nelson (no dates), who specialized in romanticized depictions of Indian maidens, are among artists known to have painted from Tonnesen's photos. Her very early work was signed "Tonnesen Sisters". But throughout most of her career, because she sold so much of her work to others for their own use, her name or signature seldom appeared on the final product. Those relatively few pieces which she painted from her own photographs were signed "Beatrice Tonnesen", and can still be found on calendars from approximately 1900 to 1930. Although she is known to have taken thousands of images throughout her career, no original glass plate negatives have ever been located. Small collections of original photos, paintings and prints are all that are known to remain. Most of the original photos are located at the Oshkosh Public Museum and the Winneconne Historical Society. Some few art researchers, relatives of persons associated with Tonnesen during her career, and historians are known to have collections, and a digital collection is retained at the Beatrice Tonnesen website. Her personal scrapbook was restored for the Oshkosh Public Museum and made available for study. Other innovations In addition to creating the first photographs of live models for print advertising and supplying the robust calendar trade of the era with decorative artwork, Tonnesen was an inventor. She is known to have patented a sewing machine cabinet and a holder for long-stem flowers. She also developed a photographic means to produce silhouette portraits and a process for creating sculptures she called "Mars Ware" from furnace clinkers. A 1949 documentary Unusual Occupations featured Tonnesen and her Mars Ware. Later life In 1930, Tonnesen, who never married, closed her studio in Chicago and moved back to Winneconne Wisconsin, where she shared her sister Clara's home until Clara's death in 1944. By the early 1950s, she was living in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, at the St. Mary's Home, where she continued to pursue her art interests, creating jewelry and sculptures. She died there on May 12,