Joseph Pennell was an American draftsman, etcher, lithographer, and illustrator for books and magazines. A prolific artist, he spent most of his working life in Europe and developed an interest in landmarks, landscapes, and industrial scenes around the world. We do not know the exact year he was elected a member of the New English Art Club, but it is likely to have been in the years following 1892, the first year he exhibited with the NEAC.

Reader discretion: this biography contains references to historic racism and antisemitism.

 

Early life and education

Pennell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 4 July 1857 and raised by his Quaker parents. At age ten, the family moved to the Germantown section of present-day Philadelphia, where he attended The Friends Select School "for six awful years, the worst of my life", a loner with few friends. Pennell spent much of the time drawing, a skill not praised in his school. He received drawing lessons from James R. Lambdin.

 

Career

After attending The Friends School, Pennell worked at the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company. His application to the new Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was rejected in 1876. Instead, he studied at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art by night until he was expelled in 1879 (Pennell claimed for encouraging a mutiny among the students).


His School of Industrial Art professor, Charles M. Burns, who had recognised Pennell's ability, helped him gain entry to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied under Thomas Eakins and others. Pennell's talents lay in graphic arts, rather than painting, and his abrupt personality contributed to difficulties during his years at the academy.


In 1880, Pennell was involved in the violent expulsion of African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, a fellow student, from the academy. Tanner had suffered bullying at the academy since his entry earlier that year, which culminated when a group of students, including Pennell, seized Tanner and his easel and dragged them out onto Broad Street. The students tied Tanner to his easel in a mock crucifixion and left him struggling to free himself. Pennell apparently did not regret this action. Many years later, when Tanner was already renowned in Europe and beginning to gain repute in the United States, Pennell recounted the attack as "The Advent of the N*gger," writing that there had never been "a great Negro or a great Jew artist."


Pennell was determined to work as an artist and opened his own studio in 1880, which he shared with Henry R. Poore. In a productive career as an artist, Joseph Pennell made over 1800 prints, many as illustrations for magazines and books of prominent authors.


In 1883, Century sent him to Italy to work on illustrations for a series of articles by William Dean Howells. Here Pennell created his 'first etching made in Europe' of The Ponte Vecchio, Florence. That same year, Pennell produced a series of evocative illustrations of heavy industry in Northern England, capturing Sheffield 'Steel City' as the world-renowned centre of steel production, with all the shadowing heavy pollution that came with it.


Pennel later commented, “I made a series of illustrations of work subjects in Sheffield which were printed in Harper's Magazine. Two things always impressed me in that town – the boiling water in the rivers and the abominable habits of the natives in the streets, who from across the rivers and behind walls and other safe places ‘eave arf a brick’ at you if you dare to draw.”


Relocating to London

In 1884, he received a major, life-changing commission from Century Magazine: a long-term assignment to produce drawings of London and Italy, as well as English and French Cathedrals. This necessitated Pennell and his wife, the writer Elizabeth Robins Pennell, relocating from America to a new home in London, England. This established Pennell as an Anglo-American artist and introduced the couple to new connections such as writers H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw and painters John Singer Sargent, William Morris and James McNeill Whistler. The latter had a profound influence on Joseph Pennell, and when Whistler moved to Paris in 1892, Pennell followed in 1893 and spent a period working with Whistler in his studio.


In 1887, Pennell began writing as Art Critic for The Star in London – a column originally started by George Bernard Shaw. But Pennell's outspokenness upset both the academy and other artists, and the editor asked Elizabeth Pennell to step in and contribute, launching her career writing art criticism.


Joseph Pennell was also elected a committee member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, and his growing renown as a graphic artist won him commissions for book illustration.


Pennell returned to the United States in 1904 and created a series of striking images of New York, capturing the dramatic transformation of the Manhattan skyline brought about by new developments like the Flatiron Building, the Times Building, and the many skyscrapers still under construction. This work was published in both American and British magazines, and Pennell returned to document New York in 1908.


He made further trips to the Americas, including to San Francisco in March 1912, where he undertook a series of ‘municipal subjects’. That same year, Pennell also travelled to create lithographs of the Panama Canal, which was still under construction.
After spending part of 1914 in Berlin, Pennell made it back to London just as World War I was declared, and obtained permission from Prime Minister David Lloyd George to record the war effort.


While sketching a Leeds munitions factory, Pennell recalled encountering a hostile crowd and having to escape with help from the local police. He reflected, "Why does war make people so idiotic? Why do people fear an artist more than an enemy? Art is powerful and the people hate it. They feel it is above them and they hate it all the worse."


The work was successfully published as Lithographs of War, bringing acclaim and an invitation from the French Minister of Munitions to portray the war in France. Aided by Henry Durand-Davray, Pennell obtained a government permit to visit Verdun and illustrate the war at the front, travelling to France as part of a press corps. But Pennell found it too horrific to stay. As a peaceful Quaker, he loathed the destruction wrought by war.


Return to America and final years

Pennell returned to England from the aborted French assignment, then on to America. When the United States entered the war in April 1917, Pennell was authorised to make records of the US war effort similar to those undertaken in England. He also produced official posters for the Division of Pictorial Publicity, which was formed to aid the US war effort.


The Pennells spent time in Philadelphia but didn't settle. Joseph travelled, lectured, and worked in Washington, D.C. In 1921, the couple moved to Brooklyn, New York. Pennell worked as a teacher at the Art Students League until a week before his death. Among his students was Frances Farrand Dodge. He contracted influenza, which developed into pneumonia, and died at home in the Hotel Margaret, Brooklyn Heights, on 23 April 1926.


In his 1951 biography of the Pennells, Edward Larocque Tinker wrote:
“Just before he died, he begged to be carried to his window for one last look at the view of Manhattan that he loved and had often sketched and painted. The doctor thought it unwise, but I have always regretted that Mr. Pennell was deprived of this last pleasure.”

 

Selected Collections

  • Musée du Louvre, The Louvre Museum, Paris, France
  • National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., U.S.A
  • The Akron Art Museum in Ohio, U.S.A
  • The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., U.S.A.
  • The Library of Congress, Washington D.C., U.S.A
  • The Portland Art Museum, U.S.A.
  • The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, U.S.A.
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, U.S.A
  • The New York Public Library, New York City, U.S.A
  • Art cyclopedia also notes that his works are found in New York by Pennell, Brooklyn Bridge At Night, The Woolworth Building, and New York Stock Exchange, 1923.
  • Tate Gallery, London
  • British Museum, London
  • Victoria and Albert Museum, London
  • Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland, UK
  • Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England, U.K.
  • Poole Museum, England, U.K.

 


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND FURTHER READING