Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"In 1884 the printmaker Joseph Pennell left Philadelphia, settling in London. There Pennell founded the Senefelder Club (1907) for lithographers. His illustrations appeared regularly in publications like The Graphic and The English Illustrated. Purdue has collected Pennell works inspired by his many excursions across Europe.
Early on Joseph and his wife Elizabeth Robins befriended James McNeill Whistler, later publishing a two-volume biography on him (1908). Today the Library of Congress holds over one hundred volumes of articles, clippings, etc. (94,000 items) on Whistler from the Pennells’ research.
Also a prolific a writer, Lithography and Lithographer and Etching and Etchers list among his best known. His texts often have strong, opinionated bias, as in The Jew at Home (1892), an anti-Semitic diatribe complete with racist caricatures – appalling today but not radical for their time.
Before any other artist in the US, Pennell depicted modern urban environments – from growing Manhattan skyscrapers to construction of the Panama Canal. His twenty-five etchings of New York made during a visit in 1904 capture his initial sense of awe at the grandeur.
Pennell almost single-handedly put the Art Student’s League in NY on the map while teaching etching there. He also served as critic for the Brooklyn Eagle and helped run the New Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Engravers. Joseph Pennell did more than any other artist of his time in establishing printmaking as an important medium worthy of “fine art” status."