Studio: international art (47.1909)

American Etchings by Mr. foseph Pennell

FIG. 23.—DARK LUSTRE DISH (LATE XV. CENT.)
(See preceding article)

SOME NEW AMERICAN ETCH-
INGS BY MR. JOSEPH PENNELL.

Mr. Pennell has returned from America,
bringing with him beautiful things. The country
has been decried by one of its own citizens as
antagonistic to art, super-practical. But it does
not appear so to Mr. Pennell. Before now he has
seized upon one of its most practical and at once
characteristic features, the sky-scrapers, and drawn
inspiration therefrom for superb works of art.
This year he has chosen his subjects from among
surroundings still more decidedly American, if
possible, and such as sound at first hearing still
more uncouth—Coal, Oil, Steel, the three great
national passwords.

To one well acquainted with the numberless
ways in which Mr. Pennell has put his fascinating
style of etching into practice, it seems almost
impossible that there could be any chance for
further novelty. Yet he will have to admit
admiringly that there have been new departures.
I, myself, do not over-rate novelty of treatment,
and would have been well satisfied to see Mr.
Pennell’s same fine black-and-white convention
applied to new subjects. An honestly good thing
does not lose in value by repetition. However, as
a matter of fact, Mr. Pennell has struck several
new notes, and at least one of them would seem to
have been altogether beyond the reach of his
particular style, before he compassed it. Some
of the new plates display a remarkable power of
coloration. Take, for example, the one called

Steel—In the Works at Homestead. It conveys an
overwhelming impression of thick atmosphere,
saturated with smoke and grime, and strangely
lurid with the sulphuric, foggy, yellow light of a
setting sun. In it all contours are dissipated, and
approaching objects change from hazy phantoms
to real things with a startling rush, just before they
reach you. I recall no instance of an artist’s
mastering colour with brush and oils more force-
fully than Mr. Pennell has done here with his
suggestions that depend solely upon the media of
black-and-white.

Another fine new note is that of the hazy,
grayish vista, splendidly represented by the plate
called Iron and Steel—Pittsburg, No. 2. No attempt
at colour-suggestion is in evidence. There is a
heavy atmosphere of fog and steam settled upon
the plate. Through it indistinct piles loom up, the
landmarks of a town of turmoil and trouble. In
the work itself line as such almost disappears,
except in the near foreground, and the plate seems
to have been painted, gray in gray, like a grisaille.

Mr. Pennell even succeeds in touching new chords
while working upon his old theme, upon archi-
tecture. For even some of the new Sky-scraper
plates strike me as an altogether fresh handling of
the well-tried subject.

I cannot help myself, I must commit a sacrilege,
if it is a sacrilege,—Mr. Pennell, I am afraid, will
be the first to pronounce it one. I personally
place Mr. Pennell’s style of architectural etching
even above Whistler’s. Whistler’s undying glory
was that of the great innovator, of the developer
of a true style, at once full of taste and logical.
But his interest was centred, I should say exclusively,
in the beauty of his interpretation The subject
as such had no real claim upon him. Thus it
happens that his etchings are essentially the
same, whether he works in Venice, or in Brussels,
or in London, Mr. Pennell’s convention of black-
and-white for architecture is, to my taste, just as
beautiful as that of Whistler. But over and above
that, he possesses an extraordinary power of
grasping the possibilities of subject. How intensely
Spanish are his Toledo plates, and how clearly do
they bring to light the very essence of their
character,—if we may speak of a building or of a
view as possessing character ! That he has the
refined sense of the poet to see beauty, where
ordinary mortals cannot penetrate beyond the
commonplace, is a gift by itself.

I feel as if we were wonderfully indebted to Mr.
Pennell for our capabilities of seeing, of enjoying,
with these new plates. Hans W. Singer.

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