But it is to America we must turn, to White's etching of Brooklyn Bridge, Cooper's skyscrapers, Alden Weir's New York at night, Bellow's docks, Childe Hassam's high buildings, Thornton Oakley's coal breakers—to these one must look for the modern rendering of work. There are others, too, who have seen the opportunity to prig and steal—but this is evident, just as it is evident that they will give up painting or drawing work for the next new thing. And there is another artist who really cares for the Wonder of Work. I do not know what else Van Ingen has done, but he has made a huge decoration of Culebra Cut—and Paul Bartlett has put American work on the pediment of the Capitol. I have tried to do what I could in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, the coal mines of my native State—Niagara—and in Europe and at Panama; and whatever their worth, I can only tell of the Wonder of Work as I see it.
New York, as the incoming foreigner, full of prejudice, or doubt, or hope, and the returning American, crammed with guide-book and catalogue culture, see it or might see it, rises a vision, a mirage of the lower bay, the colour by day more shimmering than Venice, by night more magical than London. 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; and what does it remind you of? San Gimignano of the Beautiful Towers away off in Tuscany, only here are not eleven, but eleven times eleven, not low mean brick piles, but noble palaces crowned with gold, with green, with rose; and over them the waving, fluttering plume of steam, the emblem of New York. To the right, filmy and lace-like by day, are the great bridges; by night a pattern of stars that Hiroshigi never knew. You land in streets that are Florence glorified. You emerge in squares more noble than Seville. Golden statues are about you, triumphal arches make splendid frames for endless vistas; and it is all new and all untouched, all to be done, and save for the work of a few of us, and we are Americans, all undone. The Unbelievable City, the city that has been built since I grew up, the city beautiful, built by men I know, built for people I know. The city that inspires me, that I love. And all America is like this and—all—or nearly all unseen, unknown, untouched.
I went to Panama because I believed that, in the making of the greatest work of modern time, I should find my greatest inspiration.
Almost before I left the Canal, artists, architects and decorators were on their way there. I hope it may interest them half as much as it interested me. One man has succeeded, I repeat, in doing something for himself down there—W. B. Van Ingen—and this has been acknowledged by the government, which has purchased his great decoration. This is the finest, in fact the only complete decorative work from him done in the United States—and done because Van Ingen, the pupil of La Farge—who alone counts—was trained in the right way and had something to say for himself.
We have recently been told that art will disappear in fifty years (by a person who says he will call his last book—with possible appropriateness—Vale). 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 art which shows life and work will never die, for such art is everlasting, undying, "The Science of the Beautiful."
Joseph Pennell
This introduction is founded on a lecture delivered before the Royal Society of Arts, London, and awarded its medal, and an article published by The Studio, and the author wishes to thank the Council and Publisher for permission to reproduce parts of it. And it was repeated before the Royal College of Art, London, The Corporation of Bradford and the British Architectural Association, London, etc.