Joseph Pennell: Teacher, Art Students League

"Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Thirty-Fourth Street
and Fifth Avenue" by Joseph Pennell

"Mr. Gifford Beal, President of the Art Students' League, had asked Joseph Pennell to take charge of the Etching Class and to start a Lithography Class, beginning with the October term, 1922. His time was limited to one morning a week. 'The most important happening to me,' as he described it. Though hitherto his experience as teacher had been small, his ideas as to the right way of teaching were simple and definite. He would tell his students he could not make artists of them for, as Whistler said, only God Almighty could do that. But he could teach them the craft of etching if they were intelligent and persevering enough to learn. The one thing he forbade them to do was to turn out 'Pennells.' Once the craft was mastered, they were to say on copper what they themselves wanted to say, and to say it in their own way. In the exhibitions of their work, nothing was so striking as the variety in the subjects selected and the manner of treating them.

The truth is he had a genius for teaching, though it might be the last thing expected of a man impatient by nature, compelled by the spirit within to speak the truth, and rich in his supply of invectives. His students, perhaps startled in the beginning, quickly got to understand him and, once understood, he was adored. They realized that, if he was impatient, the fault was theirs; that, if he spoke the truth, it was for their good; that, if his language was picturesque, it served as a goad to drive them on to better work and more intelligent study.

A story they liked to tell at the League was of the young girl from the south, who stood before him trembling, clasping the drawings demanded as test for admission, stammering and stuttering over and over again, 'I am sure you won't like them, Mr. Pennell, I am sure you won't like them,' until he interrupted abruptly, 'I probably won't, but anyway let me see them.' She was stunned into silence as he looked at each in turn, very carefully, told her which were good, which were bad and why, and she had not recovered her speech when he said she could stay. Inevitably, she became one of the most promising and devoted in the class. 

He not only taught his students, but worked out fresh technical problems with them. 'He works with his class as a co-students' one of his pupils wrote of him, 'is as much excited about a discovery, a new way of doing things, an experiment, as we are, and much more so than most of us. He is filled with the spirit of adventure, and is the least conceited, the least opinionated, the most open-minded man I have every met. That is one of the things that contribute to his greatness as a teacher.'" 

To be continued

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

Joseph Pennell: Election to the Academy

"Landwehr Canal, Berlin" by Joseph Pennell

"On November 18, 2021 Joseph Pennell received the announcement of his election to the Academy of Arts and Letters. He was gratified, the more so because he knew that sculptor Paul Bartlett was his Academic sponsor. Bartlett had been saying ever since his return to America, 'You ought to be in the Academy, Pennell; who else can represent the Graphic Arts as well?' And so it was brought about. He wrote a friend, 'It will be news to you that I have been made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and I had to run round trying on my robes, crown and wings...'

Pennell believed that honours carry their responsibilities, also that the Academy should not make everything of literature and nothing of art - this was six years before Mr. Huntington's gift of a hundred thousand dollars provided an income to meet the expenses of art exhibitions. Pennell suggested that a show of American etchers, from Whistler to the present school be held in March. He selected the prints, arranged them in the old Academy Building on West 81st Street, and lectured on the evening of the opening day.  

Afterwards, in the midst of his innumerable engagements, he was suddenly asked to drop everything and go to Brussels. The Royal Belgian Academy was celebrating its hundred and fiftieth anniversary and Paul Bartlett had planned to represent the American Academy of Arts and Letters. But at the last moment, he could not go, and Pennell, at the Academy's request, agreed to go in his place. He grumbled over the loss of time but, in the end, the meeting with old friends and return to old haunts, the opportunity to see what artists had been doing in his absence and visits to once familiar galleries and schools of art, more than repaid him, saddened though he was by the traces everywhere of war and its baleful influence."

To be continued

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

Joseph Pennell: American War Posters

"Lest Liberty Perish" by Joseph Pennell

"Whatever Joseph Pennell's private engagements and commissions, everything gave way to his work for the Government. He was among the many artists who made the war posters which the Government scattered broadcast through the country. For his first he chose the lithograph 'Ready to Start,' enlarged it and changed the title to 'Provide the Sinews of War. Buy Liberty Bonds.' He supervised the printing of one million copies, and in three different sizes. It was to be seen everywhere, from one end of the land to the other. 

His second war poster came in response to a competition. He explained: 

'As for the second, the idea came into my head on my way back from New York, where I had attended a meeting of the Committee on Public Information, at which posters were asked for. I made the sketch on the train, carried it out on transfer paper when I got to Philadelphia, and put it on zinc plates, printed it, and went West. It was not till months after that I heard it had passed both the  juries in New York and Washington, and was to be used as one of the posters.

The subject was 'New York City bombed, shot down, burning, blown up by an enemy. A fleet of aeroplanes fly over Lower Manhattan, flames and smoke envelop the burning skyscrapers, in the foreground Liberty, from a pile of ruins, rises headless on her pedestal, her torch shattered.' His title was 'Buy Liberty Bonds or You Will See This.' But the committee, like all committees, knew better and printed instead: 'That Liberty Shall Not Perish from the Earth. Buy Liberty Bonds.' The Government ordered so huge an edition of his second Liberty Poster that the printing had to be divided between several printing houses.

The excitement of printing it in colour was new for him. The printers were also enthusiastic, Mr. Heywood of the New York firm offered him every facility, encouraged every experiment. Pennell wrote, 'Technically it was in the printing one of the most interesting of the experiments and experiences of my life.' So interesting in fact, that he wrote a book on it, 'Joseph Pennell's Liberty-Loan Poster," which described the lithographic process in detail.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell and "Joseph Pennell's Liberty-Loan Poster" by Joseph Pennell.)  

 

 

Joseph Pennell: War Work in America

"The Keel" by Joseph Pennell

"Pennell's return from his attempted work in France was complicated. His passports and permits did not allow him a fourth voyage across the Channel in so short a period. He could get back to England only by way of Bordeaux and America, and so to America he sailed. New York was no great improvement, except for the fact that war was more remote. But there was a place for him, as I knew there would be. 

A letter ten days later brought me the news I was waiting for: 'Well they will give me a chance at Washington, and I go there tomorrow. I hope that may not be a fiasco.' He had a good friend at headquarters in Dr. Frederick Keppel, the Third Assistant Secretary of War. When the work Pennell was asked to do was done and he was making acknowledgments, he said 'And finally I wish to thank above all the man who made it all possible. He knows - and I know - I never shall be able to repay him. He is working, and I am trying to work, for our country.'

He had gotten into his stride again, nerves forgotten. He obtained permission to visit every industrial establishment he wished. In every plant, camp, yard, work, fields, in which he worked he was treated with courtesy, and his thirty-six pictures illustrated 'Joseph Pennell's Pictures of War Work in America.' Again his drawings were not done with any idea of helping to win the war, but 'because for years I have been at work trying to record The Wonder of Work, and work never was so wonderful as it is today.' 

There was another source of healing for his frayed nerves. That summer, at the end of a long day's work, he knew he would be welcome at Paul Bartlett's studio, and he would go late in the afternoon, in time for the moon flower in the Bartletts' garden to burst into its nightly blooming and fill the place with its fragrance. 'I have come to see the miracle,' he would say to Mrs. Bartlett, and they would keep him to dinner, and to be with friends rested him after his hours of drawing and went far to complete the cure begun in the munitions works and docks."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, Volume Two" and "Joseph Pennel's Picture of War Work in America.") 

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.) 

Joseph Pennell: Efforts, Successful and Not

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

"Joseph Pennell's new studio was an inspiration. He experimented with his Pittsburgh and New York plates, trying to get out of them all he put into them. He hovered about tone in etching 'by way of aquatint and sandpaper - at last I have tackled mezzotint . . . and having lots of fun and making lots of messes.'

Now and then other work interrupted. The 'Century' discovered an author as keen about the practical progress of modern industrialism as Pennell was about its picturesqueness, and little journeys were numerous, here and there in England, to France, to Germany, to Belgium, for a series of drawings and etchings to illustrate Mr. James Davenport Whelpley's article on 'The Commercial Strength of Great Britain'; 'Germany's Foreign Trade'; 'Belgium, the Balance Wheel of Trade'; and 'The Trade of France.' 

In whatever leisure was left him he kept up his large correspondence and fulfilled his every duty on committees. 'Time is short,' he reminded Morris in one of the first letters on his return. In those that followed he discussed each and every detail of the fast approaching exhibition in Venice - exhibitors, space, decoration, packers, insurance, expense. The hanging was the most important, why not 'a simple background grey or white canvas - if you are not afraid - and a simple gold band - as we do in the International.' Only the best work was to be accepted, for it was wise to remember the British attitude towards the Americans represented that winter in the International Society's Exhibition, an attitude almost of hostility against not only the mediocre but the fine.

He made out lists of artists to be represented. He reported that T.R. Way will lend a group of Whistler's lithographs, but Mr. Alexander will not lend the portrait of Miss Alexander, refuses to send 'the little girl from home again.' Mrs. Saint Gaudens wants Saint Gaudens' reliefs and bronzes included; examples of McLure Hamilton and Cecilia Beaux are matters of course. And so it went on. He urged a friend: 'My dear Morris if we [as Americans] want to keep abreast of Contemporary art we must work - something more than hustle - I am afraid this show will hurt us...' 

Sadly the show did not reflect well on the Americans as a whole, but Pennell himself did better. In June he was made a National Academician, then in November he sold all of his prints in the Venice exhibition - the Pittsburgh and latest New York etchings - to the Municipality of Venice for their Public Gallery."

To be continued

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

 

Joseph Pennell: New York, New York!

"New York Bay from the Margaret" by Joseph Pennell
Pastel on Brown Paper

"On June Twentieth, 1908, Joseph Pennell sailed for New York. While he was there, the Grolier Club proposed to give a show of his etchings with one hundred and fifty-seven prints in all, a proposal which he did not consider twice before accepting. Another show of his work was opened at Keppels'. He was also making illustrations of New York with coloured chalks on brown paper, his knowledge of New York growing with each drawing. These would be used in an upcoming book.

At the end of October I joined him, my first visit to my native land in twenty-four years. He was at the Belmont. 'People ask me why I go to the Belmont,' he wrote in the 1919 Keppel Catalogue. 'I go to get things like this ('The Clock, Grand Central') and from every room on every side I get subjects just as inspiring.' It was well that work no longer monopolized all his time. 

"The Clock, Grand Central" by Joseph Pennell

November was a month of dinners, lunches, visits, committee meetings. And he was my guide, on foot to lower New York and its skyscrapers, on ferryboats to the waterfront and its glories. And we were still in New York when 'The Life of Whistler' was published. If it cost us much time, labour and grave anxiety, we were repaid. It was an immediate success, both in England and America. Landing at Southampton on the morning of December third, in the first paper we opened we found an advertisement announcing the second edition.

That same winter McLure Hamilton painted him, in his long grey blouse, sitting in his studio by his table littered with bottles of acid, copper plates, and baths, a misty glimpse of St. Paul's through the window beyond. A.S. Hartrick made a lithograph of him in the same blouse, turning the wheel of his press. He sat to J. Kerr-Lawson for a second lithograph, to Clifford Addams for a second painting. William Strang's tinted drawing of him was made some few years before. These and Whistler's portraits, the lithographs, were on our walls. A professional beauty could be in no greater demand as a sitter, his friends used to tell him."

To be continued

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

 

Joseph Pennell: A New Home and Studio

"Wren's City Out of the Adelphi Terrace Windows"
by Joseph Pennell

"Although his home and studio on Buckingham Street in London never ceased to please Joseph Pennell, he could not resist the finer views he could have just two short blocks away on the top floor of the Adelphi Terrace House. He could look down upon an unsurpassed arrangement of the Thames, Waterloo Bridge and Wren's City. It gave him one of his unfailing inspirations: why not build a studio on the roof from which Westminster Abbey to the west, as well as St. Paul's to the east, could be seen. The architect thought it was a good idea and improved upon it. He built not merely a studio, but an entire fourth floor divided into three flats, and for two of them Pennell signed a lease of twenty-one years without flinching.

Of the flat on the river front he made his studio - a palace indeed compared to his old one. The splendour of London was spread out before him. Space was plentiful for shelves and a long, low chest of drawers to store prints and drawings in. A large closet held his huge collection of old paper for printing. The press with its paraphernalia was sold for one of the less picturesque, more practical presses the Bank of England printed its bank notes on, until hand was exchanged for electric power. The walls were bare, a single print hanging in the studio, papered in grey, but this print appropriate: Toulouse-Lautrect's affiche for 'L'Estampe Originale.' The white or pale rose on the other walls made a good background for the few Whistlers and Pennells hung. The rooms were as empty as our needs allowed, a few rugs on the well-polished floors, a few pieces of indispensable furniture. The emptiness was a beauty in itself. 

We moved in towards the end of March and I doubt if we could have moved in then, or ever, without the help of Augustine. I wonder I have not said before that she was the stay and support of the household, and had become one of the family. She was the most competent of women, a genius as a cook, a paragon of order and cleanliness. And from the first day she understood Pennell, helped him in a hundred ways, saw to the packing up and sending off of his drawings and prints, when in France hunted up old paper for him, had no fear of work, and was the only person with the courage to scold Whistler when late for dinner. 

Thanks to her powers of organization by the middle of April, Pennell, with his blocks of brown paper and his coloured chalks, was in Italy, finishing 'Italian House,' journeying as far south as Rome, Civita Vecchia, and Naples. By the end of May he was back, writing to Harrison Morris about the Whistler Memorial and a proposed exhibition of American artists in London, and answering Van Dyke's suggestion for a New York book."

To be continued

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

 

Joseph Pennell: The Bio of Whistler, Pt. 2

"By the Law Courts" by Joseph Pennell

"The British courts, like all others, take their time. The case against us did not come up until the July of 1907. In the meanwhile it was never out of Joseph Pennell's mind, day or night. It was not his habit to be beaten, no matter what the game, no matter what the fight. He let no idea, no argument escape him, tireless in his study of the situation by day, and I have known him to get up out of his bed to jot down a sudden suggestion, fearful lest otherwise it might be forgotten by morning. One comfort was that we could rely upon our three witnesses: Mrs. Whistler (Whistler's sister-in-law); Luke Ionides, one of his oldest friends; and W.E. Gray, the photographer well known to artists.

The trial began on July 2, 1907. Though we were defendants, because we claimed Whistler's authority, the onus of proving it rested with us. Pennell, nerves all on edge beforehand, was cool enough in the witness box, thankful that matters had come to a crisis, conscious that he was in the right, that he had done all he could to prove it, and that suspense would soon be over. 

The other side called in Mr. Montague Lush, whose reputation was to make things uncomfortable for witness in cross-examination. With an air of 'now I've got you,' Mr. Lush said, to some question of Whistler's nationality, 'Why, you know that Whistler was never even in America.' 'Never in America!' Pennell answered, quite in his Buckingham Street manner, 'Why, he was born there!' and the counsel, whose business was to confuse, was confused himself. Again he thought to score with the objection: 'But why should Whistler have asked you? You have never written a biography.' 'No, but my wife has,' came quick as a flash, and that point also was quickly disposed of.  

Things seemed to go better for us, though Mr. Justice Kekewich's manner was so much pleasanter to Miss Philip than to me that my heart sank. But it was plain that she had no case. The trial dragged on, till on the Tuesday, the ninth the case was 'dismissed with costs.' Whistler's authorization could not be denied. Our rights were vindicated, our authority proved. 'Now,' we were told, 'you can put 'The Authorized Life of Whistler' on the title page.' 

We felt it called for celebration. Our publisher and his two partners gave us a lunch at the Café Royal where Whistler loved to go. We drank the white Bordeaux-Podensac he loved to order. In the evening we dined with Mr. and Mrs. Sauter, falling among friends who rejoiced with us. A load was off our minds." 

To be continued

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

Joseph Pennell: The Bio of Whistler, Pt. 1

"Study of Joseph Pennell"
by James McNeill Whistler

"To the abundance of work Joseph Pennell was doing in 1906 and 1907, a burden of personal care and anxiety was added - the burden of a lawsuit, and it is hard to say whether it was worse in anticipation or when we were deep in the legal preparations for it. 'The Life of Whistler,' was the cause.

Whistler, after he asked us to write the book, spent many evenings with us, refreshing his memory of the past for our benefit, bore with patience the presence of a photographer in the studio getting special negatives for us, was as interested as Heinemann, his publisher and ourselves. His health, however, was breaking. He was much away and, towards the end, in no condition to be worried, 'to be made an Old Master before his time.' We continued to collect material during his last year and after his death.

We wrote to men and women associated with Whistler to ask for their reminiscences and impressions, and for permission to consult any letters they might have received from him. Among others we appealed to Marcus B. Huish of the Fine Art Society, who then submitted the letter to Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, Whistler's executrix, who, for some reason was under the impression that Whistler had not asked us, and who objected to us as his biographers.

The result was that on the breakfast table the morning of November 28, 1906, we found two registered letters awaiting us, one at each place. They were warnings from Miss Philip's solicitors if within a week, they had not our assurance that we did not propose to write what purported to be a life authorized by Whistler, or to publish any of his letter, Miss Philip would take such measures as she was advised to - in a word, the usual lawyer's letter. We refused to give up doing what Whistler asked us to do, for we considered doing it a sacred obligation. Miss Philip immediately took the threatened measures."

To be continued

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

 

Joseph Pennell: Illustrated Travel Guides

"Right of Way" by Joseph Pennell

"During the Nineties the vogue for the illustrated travel book had become firmly established, the result largely of Pennell's influence - not the huge elaborate publications, but the idea now was a small volume convenient for the traveler to carry, well made, well written, well illustrated, and issued for a reasonable sum. The Macmillans' Highways and Byways Series was a success from the start. It was continued with one or two volumes every year. To the English publisher of Henry James's 'Little Tour in France,' Pennell suggested: Why not an illustrated edition? 'The Best Guide Book ever written. I know because I illustrated it,' is his inscription in Mr. Edward L. Tinker's copy.

In the spring of 1899 the Little Tour took him and his bicycle over a route part of which he knew by heart, while the other part he had long been meaning to get to know as well. His Highways and Byways book for the year was also in France, 'Normandy' by the Reverend Percy Dearmer.  

Twice he interrupted the journeys. On the second he crossed from London with Lavery, each bringing a bicycle, arrived in time for the opening of the Van Dyck Exhibition with which the ceremonies closed. The collection impressed him, he must write this article himself, and we sat up till all hours, he dictating, I writing in the old fashion. The first  thing in the morning, the three of us were off on our bicycles, riding along the Belgian and French coast, Lavery as far as Calais, I as far as Dieppe, Pennell as far as Mont St. Michel, where he proposed an article to the Century and wrote to me to return to France as fast as possible. Familiarly as he knew France, his love of the beauty of 'the French scene' had not lost its ardour. 

1900 called him away on fewer long journeys, a good thing, so often did the Paris Exposition lure him across the Channel. One journey was to illustrate 'East Anglia,' a Highways and Byways book. Another in the summer was for his own amusement, though it was the prelude to a later article, 'In the Alps on a Motor Bicycle.' His love of cycling had not swindled, nor his spirit of adventure cooled. Now he was the first to put the motor bicycle to the test. He chose the London streets to begin on, not the wisest choice, and a story lingers of the machine getting away with him one day as he turned from the Marble ARch into Park Lane and met a detachment of the Black Watch. Right into the bagpipes he charged, scattering apologies right and left - 'Awfully sorry but I don't know how to stop the thing!' He escaped unhurt before they recovered from their surprise and tried to resume the swagger of their march." 

To be continued

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

Joseph Pennell: The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers

"The Trains That Come and Go" by Joseph Pennell

"To all he was doing in the Nineties, Pennell, towards the end of that crowded period, added an interest which proved anything but a sinecure. Early in the winter of 1898, after Whistler's nomination as chairman, he was elected to the Executive Council of the recently organized International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, which existed until its dissolution in 1925.

During his fourteen years in London, Pennell had watched many fruitless movements against the Royal Academy and Academic convention. The idea of the International originated with Francis Howard, who was young, had studied in Paris, taken to art criticism in London, and had the intelligence to associate with him at the start John Lavery and E.A. Walton, the leaders of the Glasgow School, and Georges Sauter, a distinguished German artist living in London. Whistler accepted the leadership of this group of independents who scoffed, as he did, at the British belief in a national art with zealously guarded frontiers.

The first meeting was held in December, 1897. At the third Whistler was elected chairman, then president. The Society was to be like no other; a self-elected Executive Council in sole charge of its affairs; exhibitors responsible for nothing save the quality of their work; a company to manage its finances; its exhibitions to be as international as its name. 

The first exhibition was held in May, 1898, in the Skating Rink at Knightsbridge, transformed temporarily into three large and two small galleries, in which Whistler's scheme of decoration, his velarium and method of hanging were adopted. Pennell arranged his journey to Wales for the late spring, to the Italian Lakes for the summer, so as to be free for his work on the Selecting and Hanging committees. His section must uphold magnificently his claims for Black-and-White. He toiled like a galley slave. If distinguished black-and-white men did not submit work he thought worthy, he hurried to their studios to commandeer their best. He did not rest until the most distinguished French, German, Italian lithographers and etchers were included. 

And it was not enough to show good work, it must be shown beautifully. He was an artist in hanging - and most artists are not. A gallery arranged by him had an air of distinction. He knew where everything ought to go, hung the collection on the floor, to quote his words, rarely making any change when he transferred it to the walls. Lunch and dinner were nothing to him. He would rather go hungry than stop at a critical stage in the hanging."

To be continued

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