Joseph Pennell's Pictures of the Wonder of Work / Reproductions of a Series of Drawings, Etchings, and Lithographs, Made by Him about the World, 1881-1915, with Impressions and Notes by the Artist - Joseph Pennell

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1916

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1915
REPRINTED OCTOBER, 1916

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.

I WISH IN THIS BOOK TO HONOR
CONSTANTIN MEUNIER
THE PROPHET AND EXPONENT OF THE WONDER OF WORK

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. Painters, who sat in their studios hundreds of years after the towers and temples were designed and destroyed, have showed what they imagined the towers and the temples looked like. This—this sort of creation or invention—we art students in America called "genius work" because it was "done out of our heads." In Europe it is called "scholarly," and is concocted from a classical dictionary; a trip for a few weeks to Greece or Italy is useful but not necessary, and adds to the expense; illustrated post cards may be used instead.

Now educated people, cultured people, take such painters seriously—and pay to sit in darkened chambers and brood. These are carefully but sadly illuminated, and the spectators pursue with diligence, scarce looking at the exhibits, the remarks of critics who prove conclusively that these painters show exactly what the world was like, what buildings were like and how they were built, and how the builders worked according to the bookman and archæologist, and the critic.

Now as to these popular forms of art—the backbone of academics,—I know, for I am a multi-academician—I have nothing to say. The results, in a few instances, have been works of art because of excellence of technique. But the man with the greatest imagination is the man with the greatest information about his own surroundings, which he uses so skilfully that we call the result imagination, and this is the way the greatest art of the world has been created.