Joseph Pennell

A prolific printmaker and writer, Pennell attended the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and later enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. He married writer Elizabeth Robins and settled in London where he befriended renowned literary and artistic figures, among them Robert Louis Stevenson, George Bernard Shaw, and Whistler. Following closely in the tradition of French lithographers Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, and Odilon Redon, Pennell mastered the technique of lithography and subsequently published Lithography and Lithographers (1898). An ardent etcher and an illustrator, he also authored Etchers and Etchings (1925) and The Adventures of An Illustrator (1925).

Pennell was most heavily influenced by 19th-century Spanish painter and etcher Francisco de Goya y Lucientes and by Whistler, whom he considered a master. Like Whistler, Pennell caught the fleeting impression of a scene and expressed tremendous emotion by employing sparer lines and less detail.