Studio: international art (39.1907)

Mr. Joseph Pennell's Recent Etchings

the beauty of nature is heightened in the work
of art.

Technically, this plate, by the way, is a marvel.
Anyone examining the original minutely will be
surprised to discover how the delicate effect of
the architecture has been attained. Practical
etchers, who know how extremely difficult it is in
this art to tell beforehand how the work is going to
turn out, will wonder at the prescience of an artist
who knew that this manner of work was going to
produce such an effect.

Some people have been pleased to remark that
Pennell is hardly more than an imitator of Whistler.
This is sorry wisdom at best, for it is always easy
to find out whom a man is like: it is much more
difficult—and worth much more, too'—to discover
wherein he differs from all others. There is some
slight excuse for these critics, since Mr. Pennell
has courted the stricture—if it be a stricture—by
imitating some of Whistler's freaks; for example,
the way of signing a print and trimming it close,
with only a little square of margin left for the
signature. Anyone making a more serious study
of the work of both men will learn soon enough
that their general ideals are similar, to be sure,

for every serious artist's ideals depend upon the
culture of his life-surroundings, and thus two
artists, enjoying the same of the one, necessarily
must uphold the same of the other; but in details
the disparity is as great as may be. Let one
example suffice. It is the gospel of both etchers
that although there be such a thing as a straight
hard line in nature, there may not be in art.
Examining Whistler's line under a magnifying
glass, we see that it generally consists—wherever
he wants to lose its hard and straight effect—
of two parallel sets of broken lines close together,
the breaks syncopating one another; whereas
Pennell draws a line over which he lays a second
in zigzag. The effect produced is the same, but
the means employed are quite different.

Some of the plates in the new London set—for
example, the London, seen from Hampstead and
the Greenwich Park—do not seem to me quite as
successful as most of the others. It may seem
paradoxical, but this fact really adds to the value
of the set as a whole, in my mind, for it proves
that each one incorporates an artistic idea, is a
conscious effort, and is dependent upon the artist's
own disposition at the time being ; whereas, if all