Joseph Pennell

“ That shop was no place for me. Those women were not lady-like.
But just as the greatest human energy has been given to war work, given to make things to explode, to kill, to destroy; so the greatest machines have been turned to do this work with the greatest skill and accuracy and the greatest speed—the workers are but a necessary detail—and it is the working of the great machinery in the great mills which I find so inspiring—so impressive—for the mills are shrines of war. The mills are the modern temples and in them do the people worship. ”

“ It is far easier to paint a heavenly host or a dream city in one's studio than to make a decoration out of a group of miners, or to draw a rolling mill in full blast. Yet one of these subjects can be as noble as the other, as Whistler proved, when he showed for the first time how in London "the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanile, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens and fairyland is before us." That is the Gospel of the Wonder of Work. ”

“ These engineers and workmen are the sort of Americans worth knowing, and yet I did not see any golf links at Gatun. The day was spent in that telephone box and on the Spillway of the Dam—a semicircle of cyclopean concrete, backed by a bridge finer than Hokusai ever imagined, yet built to carry the huge engines that drag the long trains of dirt and rock across it, to make the dam. The dam, to me, was too big and too vague to draw. And all this is the work of my countrymen, and they are so proud of their work. ”

“ From the summit we see the whole centre of Greece; even the Parthenon itself, the centre of Greek artistic achievement. Here too is the sacred spring Peirene, struck out by the hoof of Pegasus.
The view here given towards the gulf shows Parnassus in the distance, like a ghost.
Athens is the heart of Greece, and Greece is the soul of mankind. No man who loves what is beautiful, or who admires what is noble, can fail to feel at home in Athens. ”

“ I have had more opportunities of seeing what is being done in war work in England, France and the United States than any one else—and in a fashion that no one else has been permitted to see. I have seen war in the making. Yet I did not do these drawings with any idea of helping to win the war, but because for years I have been at work—from my earliest drawings—trying to record The Wonder of Work, and work never was so wonderful as it is to-day. ”

“ In the morning the mountains of buildings hide themselves, to reveal themselves in the rosy steam clouds that chase each other across their flanks; when evening fades, they are mighty cliffs glimmering with glistening lights in the magic and mystery of the night. As the steamer moves up the bay on the left the Great Goddess greets you, a composition in colour and form, with the city beyond, finer than any in any world that ever existed, finer than Claude ever imagined, or Turner ever dreamed. Why did not Whistler see it? Piling up higher and higher right before you is New York ”

“ Temporarily, the shrieking brother and sisterhood have hurt the pockets of a few artists; but illustrators may be consoled by remembering that from the time of Dürer to the pre-Raphaelites, from Whistler to Eternity, Art never has been and never will be understanded of the people; but they no longer dare to burn our productions, they only write to the newspapers about them. Art can stand that—even though it, for the moment, is hard on the artist. ”

“ But we must remember also that the stones that remain are only ruins. Even in these we may trace many of the perfections of the ancient artist; but if we could see them as they were, we should see, not stones bleached and weathered, but buildings resplendent with colour and gold. Columns, capitals, architraves, all were a blaze of colour, decorated with graceful patterns and painted to match the blue sea and the golden sunlight. And now for us Sunium is a white ghost like the light of the moon, the Parthenon a rose in decay. ”

“ Greater ease of reproduction, greater speed, greater economy of labour have been secured, as well as greater freedom for the artist, and greater justice in the reproduction of his design. As a consequence, illustration has increased in popularity, the comparative cheapness of production placing it within reach of the people who have ever taken pleasure in the art, since the days when all writing was but picture-making; it has gained artistically, since the fidelity of the facsimile now obtained has induced many an artist of genius, or distinction, to devote himself wholly to black and white. ”

“ THE WONDER OF WORK INTRODUCTION
Work to-day is the greatest thing in the world, and the artist who best records it will be best remembered. Work has always been an inspiration to artists, from the time when we were told to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, till now, when most of us are trying to forget the command, and act like "ladies and gentlemen."
Under the Church, work—the building of the Tower of Babel and the Temple—was the subject of endless imaginings by painters, sculptors and gravers who never assisted at the functions they illustrated. ”

“ But war work in America is the most wonderful work in the world and that is the reason why I have drawn some of the work I have seen—seen in these endless looms of time—where history is being woven. The attitude of the workman toward the artist is curious; in France he understands, in England he looks down on you as a poor thing who has to work—in America you are regarded as a fellow workman, as an artist is! ”

“ I came back to Colon by the side of the French Canal, completed and working up to, I believe, Gatun Lock and Dam, and spent the afternoon in the American town, every house Japanese in feeling, French or American in construction, screened with black wire gauze, divided by white wood lines—most decorative—and all shaded by a forest of palms. Through these wandered well-made roads, and on them were walking and driving well-made Americans. ”

“ If at Eleusis we think of exalted religious emotion, Delphi puts every man in awe. Well was the spot chosen for the most famous oracle of antiquity: it needs no help of man to show the powrer of God. But here, as everywhere in Greece, the awe is not too great for humanity to bear: it is not the crushing sense of impotence in the face of natural forces that one feels in the Alps or the Himalayas, it is the awe that may be felt for a being both mighty and kindly. Human beings may live here and be happy ”

“ Mallows is an artist; to him a drawing is as important as the building it represents; he does everything he can from nature, and his drawings of old work, notably difficult studies in perspective, like the cloisters of Gloucester, have never been equalled by any of the Prout-Harding-Cotman set. He feels that architecture and the delineation of it are a part of the fine arts—and he makes others feel it too. And to do this is simply to be an artist. This fashion of architectural drawing has spread to America and Germany, but it has no support in France. ”

“ But, though he will disappear, and Post Impressionism will be swallowed up in shopkeeping, and war has engulfed that, and work is stopped—save for war—and though the mustard pot has gone with the soulful doggie, and the tearful baby rival of the Dresden Madonna, the artist who has something to say in his own way about his own time, and can say it, will live, and his work will live, with Rembrandt, Velasquez, Franz Hals, Meunier, and Whistler—artists who painted and drew the work and life about them, who carried on tradition, and never regretted the past. ”

“ And I am glad that our women are not forced to undertake such work, and hope they never may be, for I have seen the black side of this work, which already has led to strikes and labour troubles in Europe—and when the war is over, will lead to greater trouble—for the Captains of Industry in Europe tell me that women run machines better than men—they devote themselves to the machine—never try to improve it—to make changes in it—only to keep it going and in good order, while the man is always trying to improve it, to make it do more, so that he can do less. ”

“ As for the people who would vulgarize art and literature, bringing everything down to their own low level, we have them always with us. And they and their hangers-on are the ones against whom the present puritans should level their attacks—not against men whose art they do not understand, even if they do object to their personality. Still here it will be always impossible to separate a man from his work; yet good art will live, and good illustration is good art. ”

“ Yet the men who have done this great work will tell you that we owe much to the French, and that if the engineers and the Commission at Panama had not the Government, with unlimited men and money, behind them, and the discoveries in sanitary science of which the French were ignorant, we, too, would have failed. They tell you, and show you how, the French worked on the Canal right across the Isthmus, and we are carrying out the great project they were unable to complete. And we have won the admiration of the world. ”

“ There it stood, solitary—beyond, behind, below—climbing up the endless hills silhouetting the horizon, revealed and hidden by showers, smoke, clouds, chimneys and chimneys and chimneys—the endless landmarks of industrial England.
This etching illustrates, too, the necessity of doing the Wonder of Work when you find a subject, and not saying, "I will come again and do it later"—and you must find your subjects for yourself: no one can tell you where there is a fine smoke effect or a stunning steam jet. ”

“ Yet from this city sailed to Cos opposite the hot-blooded youth whom Simaitha loved, whose story is told in the poet’s words of passion. And these cities, once so full of life and happiness, are a desert now. Even the new Greece, which rose from the ashes of the old not a hundred years ago, which has sprung into new life and honour within the last few months, cannot console us for the Greece that is gone. The quick intelligence is still here, the courage, the idealism; but Greece can hardly escape the corruption of the modern world, with its grasping after wealth ”

“ Their other duty is to edit their contributors, that is, if screwing and jewing an artist, and taking all life and soul for work out of him, can be described as editing. Lately has sprung up a species of illustrator who licks the boots of these editors and grovels before the process man. He turns out as much work as he can in the shortest space of time, knowing that he must make as many drawings as possible before some miserable creature, more contemptible than himself, comes along with an offer to do the work at half the price which he is paid. ”

“ Way down below the level road on which I stood, way on the opposite side of the river, Pittsburgh lies a dark, low mass, hemmed in by its rivers, lorded by its hills; in the hollow the smoke hangs so dense often I could not see the city at all, but once in a while a breeze falls on the town, and the great white skyscrapers come forth from the thick, black cloud, and the effect is glorious—the glorification of Work, for Pittsburgh is the work-city of the world. ”

“ THE SLAVES OF THE WHEEL NO composition could be finer, no movement more expressive, no grouping more perfect, and yet all this was happening every day and all day in an oily, dirty, greasy, smoky shell factory where no artist had ever worked before and the workmen, black men, were turning the big shell, under the big hammer, by the big capstan wheel that held it, and I noted in the shop that the black men saw more in my drawings than the white, yet there’s only one black painter in the country. ”

“ COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF JUNO, GIRGENTI AS the sun sinks into the silent sea, these battered, beaten columns take on a dignity which proves how impressive this temple was when their art was a living thing. Only from within comes a voice, in English or American, which proves that art is dead—Greek art.
XI
THE TEMPLES ON THE WALL, GIRGENTI THERE they stand on the outer walls, the long line of them—and there are more than I have drawn ”

“ They group themselves under their canopy of smoke as finely as any in the world, and every works in the Wonder of Work has character—just as a tree has—but how much more impressive is a row of blast furnaces, oil wells, and coal breakers, than trees! Yet these are the subjects of our age—naturally, scarcely any one ever looks at them, especially artists—though I hear the "young artists" of America have with money prizes been encouraged to take up "Labor" as a change from painting "murals"—but you can't help people to be artists or to see things, they must do it for themselves. ”

“ With so broad a scope at its service in the hands of artists, wood-engraving is not in the slightest danger. With the added possibilities of making new experiments, such as printing from lowered blocks, reviving chiaroscuro, and an infinitude of other processes open to the artistic wood-engraver, there is no probability of its becoming a lost art. I have nothing but the highest praise for the work of men like Cole, Kingsley, Gamm, French Jüngling, Baude, Kreull, Florian, Hendriksen, Bork, Hooper, and Biscombe Gardner. ”

“ And if only the engines turned out were engines of peace—how much better would the world be—but everything made in a war factory is made to destroy and to be destroyed. But one must not think of that, for if one did the war would stop, and not every one wants it to stop—or it would stop to-day—a universal demand for peace would make peace,—really would have prevented war. ”

“ Thus the Indian philosopher soars in the highest regions of speculation, and sees great truths, but they intoxicate him: he does not bring them to the test of daily life, nor does he check them by reason. The Hebrew prophet has his vision of one God, and in rapt devotion prostrates himself below the dignity of manhood. The Roman deals with practical politics and material civilisation; he has a genius for organizing, and for combining the rule of the best with the freedom and direct influence of all: he, however, despises the spirit and the imagination. ”

“ The work of all court and portrait painters is but the recording, that is, the illustration, of human vanity; and the work of all subject painters is but the recording, that is, the illustration, of great and important events; while landscape painting, a modern invention, is only more or less glorified topography. ”