Joseph Pennell: "I Could Do Nothing"

"Submarines in Dry Dock" by Joseph Pennell

"M. Henry Davray had come to Joseph Pennell's exhibition of war work in England, and, being a Frenchman, was determined that Pennell should go to France, anywhere he chose. It was arranged for him to work at Verdun, and for Verdun he was kept waiting. He had to sit patiently in Paris till arrangements could be completed. Paris depressed him beyond endurance. It was full of memories of etching with Whistler; of gay days in the Salons with the group of artists and art critics from London; of talk and more talk in the café with a long list of old friends, of evenings at the Chat Noir. The contrast was unbearable. Now it was Paris in wartime - dark, friendless, men unspeakably crippled everywhere, our old hotel gone to pieces, bombs falling. He could not stand it.

He was sent on excursions, with journalists mostly, as near the Front as possible, excursions that interested him, but this was not his way of working. His daily letters were reports of daily disappointments. On June fifteenth he wrote: 'I have been kicking my heels at the office but not a thing has happened. It was the greatest mistake to come and I have no idea of the result. Davray doesn't even seem to have written them.' On the eighteenth: 'The complications and the heat are awful. I wish I was back for nothing gets done.' On the twenty-first: 'The deep waters are going over me - I don't see any way to do the work.' On the twenty-third it was promising: 'At last I am to start on Monday,' and on Monday, he got off to Verdun.

In England, away from the Front, he could draw; in France at the Front, he could not. It was impossible to make anything of the abomination of desolation which war is. Besides, in his case, the Quaker was to be reckoned with, the man of peace to whom war was the supreme evil, also the man of nerves so sensitive that he shrank from the sight of blood. He had known Verdun in its serene days, and is heart sank within him to see it reduced to ruins and rubbish - everything desecrated, destroyed.

No one disturbed him as he sat drawing in the bomb-broken streets or the Cathedral wreck. But it was no good trying, he could not draw what he hated. He could not stay out his allotted week. 'I am back,' he wrote me from Paris, 'and the stuff's no good - mine I mean. I could do nothing.' He lamented' I have chucked up the great work offered me and I don't know why. The future is a blank.'"

To be continued

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

 

Joseph Pennell: War Work

"Within the Furnaces" by Joseph Pennell

"In London, at the end of January, 1916, a year and a half into World War I, Joseph Pennell was as convinced as ever that 'the place for an American at the present time is at home.' Our lease had thirteen years to run and we tried to find someone to take it off our hands. Muirhead Bone, lured by our windows, wanted the flat, but a Red Cross Duchess, seeking an occasional refuge from her hospital in the North of France, applied before him. It did not suit her, but she stopped on her way downstairs to see Sir James Barrie in the flat below, and he was up the same morning to ask for the first refusal.

Having got so far on the road home, Pennell changed his mind almost overnight. He had decided that the great munition works were made 'for him to draw. He explained in the preface of his resulting book: 

'I did not make these drawings, etchings, lithographs with any idea of helping on the war, or what artists for some reason are mostly asked to do, help the victims or victors of the war, for I do not believe in war. But as we are in the midst of war, though some of us are not of it - and as war has developed the most incredible industrial energy all over the world - there is no reason why some artistic record should not be made, and my record is in this book.'

He applied to Lloyd George, Minister of Munitions for permission to make pictures of the work, but it was not until July that he got his permits. Although he came with an artist's spirit, viewing the ''Land of Iron and Steel' as all mist and mystery in the morning, glitter and glare at noon, fire and fury at night - a land where work never ceases,' he was viewed suspiciously by the workers. At Leeds, munition workers at the lunch hour took him for the enemy brazenly making notes for all the world to see and he 'learned how it must feel to be a condemned murderer or a captured spy.' But the biggest shadow that fell over the Pageant of Work was that 'it fascinates, but is intolerable, when you think that all this is done to kill people.'

He had no doubt about the merit of his drawings. The surprise was their immediate and generous recognition. Officials from the Munitions Department came to see them, were impressed, must show them to Lloyd George, who caught the excitement, must exhibit them for propaganda, not merely in England but in France, in Spain, in the United States. The series must be exhibited in the Guildhall Art Gallery, the Exhibition opened by the Lord Mayor after a lunch in Pennell's honour at the Mansion House. A new volume must be made of the drawings - "Joseph Pennell's Pictures of War Work in England."

To be continued

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

 

Joseph Pennell: The Belgian Artists

"Sunset Over the Thames" by Emil Claus

"No idea of London in 1914-1915 can be given without mention of the Belgians who invaded it in their flight from the invaders of their country. Joseph Pennell's sympathy was great for the artists who had flown with the crowd - horror, sadness was in all their eyes. Pennell felt they would have been wiser to stay at home, but now they were in London, what he could do to lighten their exile, he did. He opened his doors wide to them, advised them, put them up at clubs, introduced them to dealers and colour men, was their guide to the beauty of London, which his studio windows first revealed to them.

They would stand staring out, as the twilight deepened and the searchlights played, all très émotionale, they would say. Later on, Emil Claus, asked by someone what impressed him most in London, the Tower? St. Paul's? Westminster? No, was his answer, he had seen nothing in London more wonderful than 'l'atelier de M. Joseph Pennell.' He treated them not as refugees to be kind to, but as friends, fellow artists with whom it was good to talk over his dinner table, as in France or Italy or their own Belgium he might have talked with them over coffee at the café. 

Gradually, they became interested in lithography, and the talk was of stone and paper, chalk and stump, transferring and printing. It led them back to work, and they his practical help. The only two artists who had done things for them as friends were Sargent and Pennell."

To be continued

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

Joseph Pennell: Our Philadelphia

"Joseph Pennell's success with the Panama prints encouraged him to use lithography for the one hundred five illustrations in 'Our Philadelphia," upon which he now set to work. No artist's eyes have been keener for the picturesqueness of the modern world than Pennell's and he was stirred by the arrangement of the tall skyscrapers rising, story after story, above the little red brick and white marble streets. He did not waste his time lamenting the past. He drew what survived of it and got what he could out of the present.

His reputation as a lithographer was strengthened by this book, an unrivalled presentment of his native town as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century
. He wished to have the prints safely preserved in the archives of the Pennsylvania Historical Society and offered them for an absurdly small sum. The Society refused - only to change its mind in more recent years and buy them for a high price from a dealer.

Socially, Philadephia amused him so inclined was it then, though not later, to accept us as the prophets usually unrecognized in their own country. We were offered a steady course of dinners, luncheons, receptions, visits, ceremonies. Pennell went when they did not interfere with his work. When they interfered, I went without him. Those were the days when to be asked to meet Doctor Weir Mitchell 'placed' one, and we were asked; when to figure in Peggy Shippen's 'Ledger' column was a social certificate, and we figured; when Mr. and Mrs. Talcott Williams were expected to give an evening in their Clinton Street house to every distinguished guest, and they conferred this distinction upon us; when to be invited to the Penn Club was to have the Philadelphia seal set upon one's fame, and the Club not merely invited us but held a reception in our honour. 

The climax came when all Philadelphia was again invited to meet us, this time at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a hero was made of the once unpopular student. It was an unhoped-for olive branch and Pennell was pleased."

To be continued

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

 

 

Joseph Pennell: Lithographs of the Panama Canal, Pt. 2

 

"Cranes - Miraflores Lock"
by Joseph Pennell

From "My Lithographs of the Panama Canal" by Joseph Pennell:  

"Unlike my experiences of a lifetime at other government works, I was asked for no permit. I was allowed to go where I wanted, draw what I liked. When any attention was paid to me, it was to ask what I was working for, to give me a glass of ice water - precious, out of the breeze at the bottom of a lock - offer to get me a photograph or make one, to suggest points of view, or tell me to clear out when a blast was to be fired.

Drawing had other interesting episodes connected with it, as when I sat at work in Culebra Cut, the leading man of a file of workers, carrying on his head a wooden box stopped beside me and looked at the drawing. As I happened to look up I noticed the box was labeled, 'Explosive, Highly Dangerous.' Then with his hands in his pockets, he and the rest of the gang stumbled off, along the ties, slippery boulders and through the mud. The sensation was peculiar. 

It was interesting, too, when one had been working steadily for some time, to find oneself surrounded by little flags to announce that the whole place had been mined and should not be approached, or to find oneself entangled in a network of live wires ready to touch off the blasts from hundreds of yards away, and to remember that I was behind a boulder about to be blown to pieces and might be overlooked.

But nothing happened to me. I did not get malaria or fever, or bitten or run over. I walked in the sun and worked in sun, and sat in the swamps and the bottoms of locks and at the edge of the dam, and nothing but drawings happened, but I should not advise others to try these things, nor to get too near steam shovels which 'pick up anything from an elephant to a redbug,' but sometimes drop a ton rock, nor play around near track-lifters and dirt-train emptiers - for those things are small respecters of person.

I did not bother myself about these things, nor about lengths and breadths and heights and depths. I went to see and draw the Canal, and during all the time I was there I was afforded every facility for seeing the construction of the Panama Canal, and from my point of view it is the most wonderful thing in the world. I have tried to express this in my drawings at the moment before it was opened, for when it is and the water turned in, half the amazing masses of masonry will be beneath the waters on one side and filled in with earth on the other, and the picturesqueness will have vanished."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "My Lithographs of the Panama Canal" by Joseph Pennell.)

Joseph Pennell: Lithographs of the Panama Canal, Pt. 1

"At the Bottom of Gatun Lock"
by Joseph Pennell

From "My Lithographs of the Panama Canal" by Joseph Pennell: 

"The idea of going to Panama to make lithographs of the Canal was mine. I suggested it, and the 'Century Magazine' and 'Illustrated London News' offered to print some of the drawings I might make.  But it was not until January 1912, that I was able to go - afraid the work was finished and that there would be nothing to see. Photographs taken a year or eighteen months before, showed some of the locks built and their gates partly in place. Still I started, and after nearly three weeks of voyaging found the Isthmus of Panama ahead, a mountainous country with deep valleys filled with mist - like Japanese prints. Next day I started across the continent to Panama, for I learned the government headquarters were there, and, until I had seen the officials, I did not know if I should be allowed to work or even stay on the Isthmus. 

At Gatun I got off the train, and saw the tops of the locks only a few hundred yards away. From there I looked down into a yawning gulf stretching to right and left, the bottom filled with crowds of tiny men and tiny trains - all in a maze of work. Overhead, huge iron buckets flew to and fro, great cranes raised or lowered huge masses of material. As I looked, a bell rang, the men dropped their tools, and line of little figures marched away or climbed wooden stairs and iron ladders to the surface. The engines whistled, the buckets paused, everything stopped instantly, save that from the depths a long chain came quickly up, and clinging to the end of it, as Cellini would have grouped them, were a dozen men - a living design - the most decorative motive I have ever seen. For a second only they were posed, and then the huge crane swung the group to the ground and the design fell to pieces as they dropped off.

In the evening a ride of two hours took me over the thirty miles to Panama. The next morning I went to the Administration Building and presented my letters, though I did not know if I should be allowed to draw. But it seemed that everything had been arranged for me by the Commission, who, it also seemed, had been doing nothing for weeks but waiting my coming. I was clothed, fed, taken about in motor cars and steam launches, given passes on the railroad, and finally turned loose to go where I wanted and draw what I liked - and if anything happened or did not happen I was just to telephone to headquarters. 

The following day, donning my khaki and pocketing my pass and some oranges, I started for the locks at Pedro Miguel to get a drawing of the great walls that led up to the great gates, now nearly finished. I had come at exactly the right time. The walls were surmounted with great arches and buttresses - the most decorative subject, the most stupendous motive I have ever seen - almost too great to draw."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "My Lithographs of the Panama Canal" by Joseph Pennell.}

Joseph Pennell: The Death of Kind Edward VII

The Funeral Procession

Preparation for the Lying in State

"Joseph Pennell was back in London when King Edward died on May 6, 1910.  From that night until after the funeral on May twenty-sixth he had little peace. Our front door was besieged by newspaper, messenger and telegraph boys. The postman came heavy laden. The 'Daily Chronicle,' the 'Illustrated London News,' the 'Times' clamoured for drawings, and the journalist in him, long quiescent, awoke as of old. He would not have sought the work. He had done with this sort of illustration, but when it fell to him uninvited, he plunged into it with his accustomed go and vigour. 

He has told the story: the dark night of waiting for the end outside of Buckingham Palace; the days in Westminster Hall, he, the one illustrator to get in while carpenters and painters made ready for the Lying-in-State; his equal success on the day of the funeral with the aid of John Burns, triumphantly capturing building and point of view he had decided all along must and should be his. He revelled in the excitement, and rejoiced when it was over."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of joseph Pennell, Volume Two" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)