Joseph Pennell: Sealing the Deal

"The Tower of London" by Joseph Pennell

"In July 1883 Joseph Pennell left Italy for Edinburgh. The contrast was bewildering, incredible. The Venetian sunlight, not yet washed out of his eyes, could not blind him to the picturesqueness of the sombre northern town with the stern castle on the hill and the thick grey mist. Wash seemed the appropriate medium for a series of commissions in this part of the world before he sailed back home. 

He was in his very best form upon his return, full of what he had seen, what he had done, what he had felt, what was to come of it. His energy was irresistible. Again, he was eager to collaborate with me in his hours of work eager to have me as a companion in his hours of play. 

Thanks to him, I became a fully accredited art critic on not only the 'American' but the 'Press.' When an important exhibition opened in New York, we would run over together. He would guide me through the gallery to such good purpose that, we could also take in the opera or theatre after lunch and, coming back on the train, I would write away for dear life, he at my elbow in case of need, and my article would get to the office in time to appear in the next morning's paper. 

Early in 1884 they asked him as a special favour to run down to Washington, another illustrator having failed them. It happened that I was called to Baltimore for a day and to Washington for another, and we planned to make the journey together as far as Baltimore and together return from Washington. In the Pullman he began at once on a favourite subject - the beauty of Italy, the absolute necessity of my spending the following summer there. He would get me articles to do that would pay my way. If prudish Philadelphia would stand our journeys to New York and Baltimore, why wouldn't they stand a journey to Italy? In his determination to take me there, he suggested a life partnership which would enable us henceforward to share not simply Italy's, but the world's beauty, at no risk of criticism or gossip. And, with his genius for success, he succeeded in settling the matter. The wedding ceremony was performed in the front parlor of Number 1110, Spruce Street, Philadelphia. 

On the last Saturday in June, with a promise of return tickets from the 'Century,' and a letter of credit for eighteen hundred dollars, we sailed on the 'Oregon' for Liverpool." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The lIfe and Letters of Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)  

 

Joseph Pennell: Italy

"Porto Romano, Florence"
by Joseph Pennell

"The immediate outcome of the 'Century's' satisfaction with Joseph Pennell's work was another more important commission for ten etchings to illustrate a series of articles on Tuscan cities by William Dean Howells, whose fame was in its full glory. It may be worth recording that for these ten etchings Pennell was offered five hundred dollars, together with his steamer ticket going and coming, nor was he to make any use of the prints until after their publication. He accepted, because the work would take him to countries it was his desire to see, also because he knew that if he made good plates, he would be amply repaid later on in reputation, if not in money. Besides, he who found work everywhere, would find other things to do along the way. In fact the 'Century' added one additional illustration of Edinburgh and twelve of the English Cathedrals. And while in London he approached the editors of the 'Portfolio,' 'Magazine of Art' and 'Art Journal, and got them to promise at least to look at any drawings he might send from Italy.

He made straight for Florence and Howells, but felt far more at home there with a little English group whom he got to know almost immediately, much to his surprise. He had been hardly any time in Florence before he was on intimate terms with Mary Robinson, to whom a first volume of poems had brought fame; Vernon Lee who had begun to write her learned and flamboyant essays on art; Evelyn Pickering, re-echoing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in her paintings and another and very different set - 'the Duveneck Boys.' Duveneck was off in Venice but four or five of the 'Boys' lingered in Florence, met with Pennell of an evening in the little hole of a trattoria where, for the sake of good company and cheapness, they dined together.

The story is in his letters to me, the story of the American youth for the first time under the spell of an Italy which was not yet a hopeless prey to tourists and progress - the youth with eyes wide open to beauty, with no ambition save to capture that beauty and imprison it on paper or copper plate, with the keen journalistic instinct that made him discover articles wherever he went, with a tendency to black despair when work did not go right, to bubbling over with high spirits when it did. 

By July Pennell's illustrations for 'Century,' Howell's 'Florentine Mosaic,' were finished. In addition, he managed to send to London illustrations for three articles by Vernon Lee: 'The Youth of Raphael,' published in the 'Art Journal,' 'North Tuscan Cities' in the 'Magazine of Art,' and 'San Gimignano of Many Towers' in the 'Portfolio.' In Venice he made not only a series of etchings but drawings to illustrate three articles on 'The Artist in Venice' by Julia Cartwright. He could start north with an easy conscience. He had put his best into his etchings and he knew they were good."

 To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.) 

Joseph Pennell: Introducing Elizabeth Robins

Sketch of Elizabeth Robins Pennell
by Joseph Pennell

"'Scribner's' could not have enough of the new artist, Joseph Pennell, on its staff. Commissions tumbled over each other. But one commission of 1881 I cannot dismiss as lightly because of its influence in shaping Joseph Pennell's life and mine, though at the time we had never as much as heard of each other.

On May 3, 1881, Drake wrote: 'Will you please send me, say - eight of your very best etchings of old Historical Buildings about Philadelphia with notes of description. It is possible that a short article on them may be worked up for 'Scribner's. These were accepted and a writer sought to work up the story. My uncle Charles Leland was asked, but too busy at the time, he proposed me. My first appearance in print had been in the 'Atlantic' a few months before. They agreed and my uncle and I made an appointment to meet Pennell. 

After all these years, I still wonder which amazed me most, the artist or the studio. I knew no artists, had never been inside a studio. I am not sure what I expected but I fancy something Oidaesque. We read Ouida in those remote days, also newspaper stories of princely British and French painters working in palatial studios. What I found was a large bare room, a dusty floor without carpet, a high ceiling, a large uncurtained window. The chairs were few and either broken or littered up with odds and ends. 

The artist waiting for us was young, tall, exceedingly thin, with brown hair, brown moustache and shortish brown beard, deep-set grey-green eyes, intent and serious beyond his years, holding one's attention at once. I remember thinking him a strange combination of shyness and self-possession. He was shy in meeting Leland whose reputation as a writer was greater than it is now and who looked the prophet. And the youth who was 'afraid of girls' may have found me terrifying. But when our preliminary talk brought us to the proposed article, Pennell's shyness vanished. 

Wholly self-reliant where his art was concerned, he stood in fear of neither man nor woman. And as he talked he fired one with the flame of his enthusiasm. Even Leland, who preferred to hold the floor himself, could not resist, was forced into silence... Before we left the studio Pennell arranged to give me a list of his subjects or better, to show them to me so as the more lucidly to explain them and the impression he wished to convey in his prints, and we started on our walks within the next few days."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)  

Joseph Pennell: Illustrator

"At the Sign of the Plow"
by Joseph Pennell

"If Joseph Pennell did not grow famous over night, he came very near it. In less than two years after his reckless shaking of business from off his feet, his drawings were appearing in 'Scribner's Magazine' and, sure sign of success in the eyes of his family, he was making a good income.

He deserved to succeed. His crowning pleasure never ceased to be work. With that nothing could interfere. He never wavered in his determination to become an illustrator nor in his belief in his own ability. He had the advantage of being at the dawn of 'The Golden Age of Illustration in America.' Artists were appearing among the illustrators of the younger generation - Abbey, Pyle, Rogers, Reinhart in 'Harper's.' Farney, Blum, Brennan, Lungren in 'Scribner's.' Joseph Pennell, his portfolio under his arm, began his siege of the publishers' offices. 

It was largely to chance he owed his first commission. F.D. Stone, librarian of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, had for a few years been the Pennells' neighbour. He was a fairly keen collector of prints and in his house the boy had spent many evenings poring over his portfolios. Among Stone's other visitors was Townsend Ward, who was adding a record of Germantown Road for the Pennsylvania Historical Society's 'Magazine of History and Biography. He asked Pennell to illustrate the articles. The result was Pennell's first series of etchings, small plates of places he either knew or could copy from old prints. In all the rendering was sincere, the picturesqueness of his subjects was expressed picturesquely, and already he revealed his never-failing sense of the right point of view. 

Before the plates were all bitten, he was planning, scheming, besieging editors. He ran to fires. He wrote and illustrated accounts of cycling tours, he suggested the illustration of Edgar Allen Poe's works, and explored a marshy stretch of ground in South Philadelphia called 'The Mash' and induced a writer he knew to outline the text of an article which he then submitted to 'Scribner's' with his work. The drawings were liked and Pennell was sent home to finish the series. When Pennell made his second journey to New York, it was with finished drawings. They were accepted and paid for on the spot. They were even sent to the next exhibition of the Salmagundi Club. The supreme moment was when he went straight to his mother's room, took his pay out of his pocket and threw it, note by note, on her bed. It was his vindication - and after this, work streamed in of itself."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)  

 

 

Joseph Pennell: A Life-long Regret

"The 'L' and Trinity Building"
by Joseph Pennell

Joseph Pennell was not entirely happy at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. "He objected to some of the teachers as 'too much mechanical and too little industrial art,' and stayed away from their classes. His fellow students began to follow suit, he was unwittingly inciting rebellion, and when the secretary wrote asking an excuse for his non-attendance, he neglected to answer. After a reasonable interval a second letter from the secretary informed him that 'his name was stricken from the roll of scholars.' 

One of the staff promptly induced the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to look again at Pennell's drawings. This time he was not rejected, and at last convinced that selling coal was a sheer waste of his talent, he threw business to the winds and settled down to hard work in the Academy School. Hardly had he left the office, as if in justification of his new adventure, he received his first serious commission - and then another, and another! Great was the amazement of Pennell's family and friends to find that he could earn more from art in two days than in two weeks from business. 

At the Academy he started in the night Antique Class, which was in charge of the type of master who dispenses criticism with a sneer. For Pennell, ultra-sensitive, a sneer was no stimulant. He shrank from it, escaped by absenting himself from the classroom at the hour of the master's visit, and as his time was at last entirely his own, joined the day Antique Class under one of the best professors who ever taught at the Academy. 

Thomas Eakins was interested in him and soon promoted him to Life Class. Eakins did not sneer but he could be brutal. Pennell was determined to work in his own way for the end he had set himself. He did the unheard of and drew the model on a large scale in pen and ink. Eakins was indignant, would not stand that sort of originality and said so brutally. The student once more dispensed with the master's criticism. He gave Eakins no chance to be brutal again, a mistake he regretted as the years went on. 

His months of study taught him at least that art knows no short cut, that technique cannot be mastered save by diligent application, and it was good for him just to breathe the atmosphere of the Academy, to make friends with artists, to talk of the things he cared for with those who also cared. Pennell got out of the Academy not all it might have given had he been less sensitive, but enough to repay him, even if he did deprive himself of the criticism supposed to be the chief advantage of study in an art school. When commissions quickly multiplied for the work it was his ambition to do, he left the Academy and took a studio, sharing it with his friend Harry Poore, and having for neighbours Cecilia Beaux and Stephen Parrish. By the end of 1880 he was well launched.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters fo Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)  

Joseph Pennell: Influencers

"The Bridge Across Market Street from 
Broad Street Station" by Joseph Pennell

"Joseph Pennell made friends among the students at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, the friendship lasting through life with H.F. Stratton, in his turn a master at the school, and G. Dinsmore Gideon, who exchanged art for publishing. They and other students, who were in earnest, formed a class within the class, wandered all over town in search of subjects to sketch, with Pennell the coal clerk somehow managing to get days off to go along. On Sunday, they would have a model or carry their sketchbooks down by the river. They drew illustrations, one of the group suggesting the subject each week. 

Mr. Stratton remembers that Pennell's first etching, on glass, of 'Dingman's Ferry' was shown at the Academy, the year 1879. It was banished to the top line. 'Never mind,' said Pennell, 'my things will be hung lower next year.' 'And,' Mr. Stratton adds, 'they were.'

About this period it was Pennell's good fortune to run across young Gerome Ferris, through whom he got to know Stephen Ferris the father, an important factor in Pennell's development. Ferris helped to found the New York Etching Club and the Philadelphia Society of Etchers. He was an accomplished technician, and always willing to admit intelligent students into the studio and let them watch him at work. It was he who inspired Pennell to substitute copper for glass, and he was also responsible for the first phase of Pennell's style as illustrator. 

Ferris had discovered modern Spanish art, been thrilled by the discovery, owned Fortuny etchings and reproductions of Rico, Casanova, and Fabrès. It was a pleasure to show prints to so responsive a youth and to take him to see the paintings by Fortuny and Rico in the Gibson and Johnson collections. Through Ferris, the Spanish was the strongest influence revealed not merely in Pennell's early drawings by in American illustration at its best. Blum, Brennan and Lungren, who had studied in the Pennsylvania Academy, also met Ferris, were invited to his studio, and profited by their visits."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)  

 

Joseph Pennell: If At First...

"Rainy Night, Charing Cross Shops"
by Joseph Pennell

"Joseph Pennell's goal was admission into the Pennsylvania Academy School. Tuition there was free, and it was probably as good as any other in the country. For the country, having no art, naturally had no art schools of the least pretension. Students went abroad for their training. William Morris Hunt and John La Farge studied in Paris. In the spring of the Centennial year, a landmark in the history of American art, William Merritt Chase, Frank Duveneck, John Twachtman, McLure Hamilton, and Henry Muhrman, back from Munich and Antwerp schools, exhibited in the Pennsylvania Academy: the first group of American artists, though foreign-trained, to lay the foundation of whatever we have in the way of American art today.

Pennell submitted his summer's work and after months of waiting was requested to send for it. He was rejected, and again when he tried his luck at the first exhibition in the Academy's new building. He could not live indefinitely on his parents, who, if they said nothing, he knew were ashamed of having to keep a grown-up son. Various schemes were suggested. Nothing offered itself except a clerkship in the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company's office and, despairing, he accepted it and settled down to his distasteful duties as clerk.

He was conscientious, and did it to the best of his ability. He gave his employers a fair return for his salary - seven dollars a week to start with - and refused to allow the office to exhaust his energy or stifle his ambition. To the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, an outcome of the Centennial, he submitted the pen and chalk drawings, the studies of casts and marines rejected by the Academy. The new school saw something in them. He was entered as a student. And now, he said, his life began. The only classes he could attend were in the evening. From seven in the morning until six in the afternoon, he was at his clerk's desk. At six he rushed home, bolted his supper, and was off to the school in an old tumbled-down building at Broad and Race Streets.  

Pennell never had any use for 'genius work,' as it is known in the studios. He believed in the genius of industry. Like all artists who have succeeded, he worked unceasingly. In the office when business was slack, the foreman, with a curious likeness to Lincoln, would pose for him. He sketched everything in sight, usually on brown paper in black and white. After work he etched on glass. He drew his beautiful old Great-aunt Beulah and the other aunts in their Quaker dress. On vacation with the entire day at his disposal, his work was his recreation."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)