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.)