(These long out-of-print travel memoirs will delight avid ...)
These long out-of-print travel memoirs will delight avid cyclists as well as scholars of travel literature, cycling history, women's writing, Victorian literature and illustration.
(Mr. and Mrs. Pennell's authorised Life of James McNeill W...)
Mr. and Mrs. Pennell's authorised Life of James McNeill Whistler appeared in two volumes in October 1908 and has had to be reprinted in that form three times since then.
Joseph Pennell was an American artist and educator, primarily known for his etchings and illustrations. Much of his early work consisted of city scenes, published in magazines. He later worked on a variety of projects, often illustrating books in collaboration with his wife, author Elizabeth Robins.
Background
Joseph Pennell was born on July 4, 1857 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. His ancestors left Nottinghamshire, England, in 1684, for Pennsylvania, and for generations were husbandmen, until Larkin Pennell, Joseph's father, broke the family tradition by becoming a teacher and later a shipping clerk. He married Rebecca A. Barton. Joseph, born in their quiet house on South Ninth Street, Philadelphia, was their only child.
Education
Joseph Pennell attended Quaker schools in Philadelphia and later in Germantown, where his family settled down in 1870. In 1876 he finished the Germantown Friends' Select School and, in spite of the opposition of his parents, tried to enter the school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but was rejected.
As a student, Pennell was already establishing himself as a commercial artist, receiving several private commissions while still at school. After he withdrew from the school, Pennell traveled to New York in 1881 to enhance his career. His portfolio impressed art director of the periodical Century, thus beginning a thirty-three-year relationship with the periodical. Pennell quickly established a reputation as a renowned illustrator.
One of his successful first projects was illustration of a series of articles by George Washington Cable in New Orleans. Based on public response, Century published the collection in a book called The Creoles of Louisiana in 1884. He also traveled extensively throughout Europe on commissions for Century, including a two-year project, sketching English cathedrals. Pennell and his wife decided to settle in London. Moved by the beauty of the many cathedrals he visited, Pennell and his wife wrote A Canterbury Pilgrimage. The book's success paved the way for Pennell's writing future. Pennell soon became an art critic for the afternoon paper, The Star, under the pseudonym U. A. - Unknown Artist. Many artists took offense to his strong, no-nonsense opinions, but his praise also helped the careers of many others.
Pennell traveled throughout Europe at Century's bidding. Century decided to follow his series on English cathedrals with one on French cathedrals, sending Pennell on another long journey. He also renewed his study of etching. Having purchased a second-hand etching press, Pennell saw the opportunity to learn how to improve the etched image. He began incorporating etching into his projects, including his cathedral project. But he and the author could not resolve their differences, and the project was abandoned. After many years, Pennell completed the project with his wife, Elizabeth, who took over as author. Pennell's ease in etching the cathedrals showed how his etching skills had improved since the project had been abandoned.
Pennell soon discovered another art form. He was greatly impressed with a lithography exhibition in Paris, which commemorated the centenary of its invention. Commissioned to illustrate Washington Irving's The Alhambra, he decided to use lithographs. He exhibited his Alhambra lithographs at the Fine Art Society, but they sold poorly. Rejection, however, would not deter Pennell, who continued using lithographs in many of his projects. After intense research, he also wrote a-book on lithography, Lithography and Lithographers.
Also during this time, Pennell along with his wife made an exhausting trip through Europe. They traveled through Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria, and climbed and biked through the Alps. They documented their adventures in Over the Alps on a Bicycle. Various stories and drawings from their trip also appeared in Century. The Panama Canal construction also inspired Pennell. In what was considered one of his greatest projects, Pennell spent eight months there and made thirty lithographs of the canal, which appeared in Joseph Pennell's Pictures of the Panama Canal, one of his most successful books.
When World War I broke out in 1914 Pennell was in Berlin doing more lithographs, but he returned to England immediately and spent the balance of that year helping stranded Belgian artists and organizing picture sales to aid the refugees. After the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, where Joseph Pennell served on the art jury, he made lithographs and drawings of British plants engaged in war work. The War Ministry, realizing their value as propaganda, arranged to show them in London and they were later published as Joseph Pennell's Pictures of War Work in England (1917). He sold his lease of the Adelphi Terrace studio to Sir James Barrie, with the intention of returning to the United States, but before he could leave, the French government invited him to make war drawings, so he crossed the Channel in May 1917, but returned almost immediately, unable to stand at such close range the horrors of war.
A little later Joseph Pennell tried again, managed to do a few unimportant drawings in Verdun, and, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, took ship for the United States. There he recovered his poise and threw himself into making drawings of the industrial war activities of America and volunteer work for the government as a vice-chairman of the division of pictorial publicity, Committee on Public Information. In 1921 he went with his wife to Washington to make arrangements for exhibiting the valuable collection of Whistleriana they had presented to the Library of Congress. When the exhibition was over they moved to the Hotel Margaret in Brooklyn, where Pennell was enthralled by the gorgeous panorama of New York and its harbor, visible from their window.
On an earlier visit in 1904 to serve on the jury of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Pennell had etched his first New York skyscraper. Now he became even more enthusiastic and spent his time suggesting on paper their overpowering mass and the grandeur of their groupings. By the way of relaxation, he did watercolors of the view from his window in all its different atmospheric changes. In 1922 he was invited to teach etching at the Art Students' League in New York and threw himself into the work with the keenest gusto. He shared with his pupils all the secrets of his craft, and, during the four years he served, made an eminently successful teacher, for he had the rare ability and fired his students with the ambition to work and to experiment. This success was all the more remarkable because he had earned a reputation for being querulous and fault-finding.
The destruction he saw during the war anguished Pennell. It drained him emotionally and cost him many pieces of his vast and precious collection of art. He was depressed for a long time. Toward the end of Pennell's life, he devoted much of his energy to writing his autobiography. This was his last project; five months after its publication, he died of pneumonia.
Always an explorer of new techniques, Pennell experimented with pen, pencil, wash, Russian charcoal, etching and even mezzotint. When photo-engraving began to replace woodblocks for reproducing illustrations, Pennell, ignoring the contention of William Morris and his disciples that the new process would only vulgarize art, felt it his duty to study the invention to see how it could best be made to serve the cause of illustration, which he felt should be kept alive and contemporaneous.
Joseph Pennell resented and was disheartened by the spirit and manner of the polyglot New York which he found upon his return after thirty-three years abroad. Prohibition, too, increased his pessimism, and his fulminations against it became increasingly lurid, picturesque and frequent, for he believed that there can be no art in a Dry Desert filled with drunken Hypocrites which humans have become. This railing arose partly from his convictions but more from the fact that he was overworked.
Quotations:
"Etching is not putting down lines, as someone, who cannot do it himself, tells you to, or as he does it, but putting down lines for one's self that will print, that means something to others, others who can see."
"When the United States wished to make public its wants, whether, of men or money, it found that art - as the European countries had found - was the best medium."
Membership
Philadelphia Society of Etchers
1881
Senefelder Club
1915
Personality
In his early years, Joseph Pennell was a nervous, moody child and preferred to be alone to draw pictures.
Joseph was a picturesque and earnest personality. His strong, outspoken convictions and his instant willingness to defend them made him a distinctive figure. Pennell was a devastating critic of anything he considered slipshod, but petty personal jealousy never kept him from extolling the excellent work of others.
Pennell's friends included many of the most notable creative figures of the day, including writers George Bernard Shaw and Robert Louis Stevenson and painters John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler.
Physical Characteristics:
Often ill, Joseph had frequent accidents, becoming left-handed after he broke his right arm.
Quotes from others about the person
"As well as being an extraordinary draftsman, Pennell was a gifted writer with a big, forceful voice and a colorful, incisive wit." - Michael Scott Joseph
"Pennell's eye for city views and picturesque structures, his tireless industry and his gifted draftsmanship quickly made him indispensable; all in the specialized world of American magazine illustration Pennell carved a place for himself as the preeminent architectural illustrator in America." - Michael Scott Joseph
Interests
Sport & Clubs
bicycling
Connections
In 1884, Joseph Pennell married Elizabeth Robins Pennell, an author.
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