Rosalie Thorne McKenna

Rosalie Thorne McKenna—known as Rollie—was a professional portrait photographer. After finishing coursework for her master’s in art history at Vassar College, Rollie set off to Italy to photograph Renaissance architecture in 1950. Switching her focus to portraits, she began photographing poets, writers and artists in 1951, and photographed many important literary and artistic figures in the mid-twentieth century.

Her paternal great-grandmother, Harriet Van Schoonhoven Thorne, also a photographer, had a summer home and photography studio in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Particularly close to her grandfather, Victor Corse Thorne (Harriet V.S. Thorne’s son), Rollie began spending her summers in Connecticut with her father’s side of the family when she was still in her teens, and eventually settled in Stonington, CT, in 1961, after almost fifteen years of living in Millbrook, NY and New York City (both places where various members of the Thorne family resided).