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.)