Born: 17 August 1872, United States
Died: 8 March 1955
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Bessie Onahotema Potter
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Bessie Potter Vonnoh, an American sculptor, born in St. Louis. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Lorado Taft, whom she assisted in his work on the Agricultural Building at the World’s Fair in 1893. Afterward she studied in Paris and Italy.
In 1899 she was married to Robert W. Vonnoh, the painter. Her subjects are portrait and ideal statuette groups of children and young women. Her Dancing Girl, Reading Girl, and the group of mother and children, called Motherhood, have been widely praised owing to their grace and simplicity.
Mrs. Vonnoh was awarded a bronze medal at Paris in 1900, and a gold medal at St. Louis in 1904.
IW note: Vonnoh was elected an academician of the National Academy of Design in 1921, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1931. In 1937, she completed the Burnett Memorial Fountain in Central Park, her best-known large-scale work.