Tunis Ponsen Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Tunis Ponsen, born in the town of Wageningen in The Netherlands on February 19, 1891, was the son of a house painter whose trade he learned as a boy. He manifested an early interest in the fine arts, copying a painting at the Rijksmuseum when he was 14. He emigrated to the United States in 1913 and first settled in Muskegon, Michigan where, at age 30, he had his first solo exhibitions. Ponsen's success as a traditional painter strengthened in 1924 when he relocated to Chicago, where he painted. Around 1924, Ponsen entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in 1938, Ponsen's work was included in 34 important museum exhibitions. Critics regularly praised his work which found a strong following at the Detroit Institute of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Flint Institute of Arts, Muskegon Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, among others. At a 1938 solo exhibition of Ponsen's paintings at Chicago's Drake Hotel, it was observed that “There is a kind of Dutch honesty in a painting by Tunis Ponsen. Ponsen's paintings grow on you. At first, they may strike you as a trifle harsh, perhaps a bit too blunt. But go back to the creations again and you will appreciate that while Ponsen's method is conscientiously abrupt, it is far from crude. You begin to feel the downright integrity of the artist. These paintings are not color poems, mood symphonies, or anything of the sort. This is prose, straightforward and deliberate shorn of all superlatives, done by a man well trained in the grammar of art.”

Tunis Ponsen was highly prolific during his professional years, 1930–67. His methods included oil paintings on canvas, watercolors and an extremely limited number of single-color lithographs and linoleum block prints. Ponsen painted images that captured his heart and now evoke for some viewers, emotions of nostalgia. From landscapes depicting the verdant rolling fields of western Michigan and eastern seaboard water scenes, to still lifes and florals, compelling portraits and personal interior scenes, Ponsen's imagery conveys visually what may be the artist's diary of his life. The rediscovered Tunis Ponsen has been the focus of considerable interest among collectors and scholars. A traveling exhibition of 52 Ponsen paintings between 1994–96 set attendance records at seven midwest museums. From 1920–67, Tunis Ponsen's paintings and watercolors were included in hundreds of exhibitions and he won many awards and prizes. Although he exhibited widely and sold many paintings during his lifetime, at the time of his death in 1968 his niece, Angenita Morris, discovered and inherited more than 1,000 paintings and watercolors from Ponsen's studio. Those oil paintings, a few acrylics, and an unexpected collection of woodblock prints and black and white lithographs have later been inherited by the children of Angenita Morris.  Never married, his true loves were his painting, sister and niece. In Chicago, he slipped on the winter ice and complications from surgery resulted in his death in 1968.