Joseph Pennell (July 4, 1857 – April 23, 1926) was an American draftsman, etcher, lithographer, and illustrator for books and magazines.

[1] A prolific artist, he spent most of his working life in Europe, and developed an interest in landmarks, landscapes, and industrial scenes around the world.

[2] After attending The Friends School, Pennell worked in an office of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company.

Pennell's talents lay in graphic arts, rather than painting, and his abrupt personality contributed to difficulties during his years at the academy.

[2] In 1880, Pennell was involved in the violent expulsion of African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, a fellow student, from the academy.

Like his later mentor, James McNeill Whistler, he also left America for London, England, on a commission to provide illustrations for US Century magazine, and taught at Slade School of Art.

It serves as an excellent and insightful summary of his career up to that point, and is freely available as an e-book;[4] As is Pennell's 1925 The Adventures of an Illustrator:[5]

In a productive career as an artist, Joseph Pennell made over 1800 prints, many as illustrations for magazines and books of prominent authors.

Depicting first landmarks of his native Philadelphia, US, then travelling the globe and back recording the landscapes of South America, mainland Europe and industrial cities of his adopted English home.

As Mahonri Sharp Young writes:[Y]oung Pennell had a genius for not getting along with people yet was immediately successful in the fiercely competitive field of illustration.

I even tried to bite them out of doors as I drew them – Hamerton' Philip Gilbert Hamerton – 'had recommended that – but only once, for I could not see and I swallowed the fumes of acid as I bent over the flat easel which held the bath, and then I upset that.. but the crowd enjoyed it, especially when the fumes ate the skin off my throat and I spat blood all about'[11]That same year Pennell produced a series of evocative illustrations of heavy industry in Northern England, capturing Sheffield 'Steel City' as the world renowned centre of steel production, with all the shadowing heavy pollution that came with it.

[2][15] Joseph Pennell was also elected a committee member of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers and his growing renown as a graphic artist won commissions for book illustration.

One of these pen drawings was printed in the London Pall Mall Gazette[11] By 1901 he was working with William Dutt providing illustrations for his book Highways, Byways and Waterways of East Anglia : a Collection of Prose Pastorals Pennell returned to the United States in 1904, producing a series of striking New York images marking the dramatic change that new development, like the Flatiron Building, the Times Building and the many towering skyscrapers still under construction, were making to the Manhattan skyline.

[16] He made further trips to the Americas, including to San Francisco in March 1912, where he undertook a series of "municipal subjects" which were exhibited December 1912 at "the prestigious gallery of Vickery, Atkins & Torrey".

[19] Steam Shovel in the Cut at Bas Obispo[18] After spending part of 1914 in Berlin, Pennell made it back to London just as World War I was declared, and obtained permission from the British PM David Lloyd George to record the war effort, sketching munitions factories in North England; Turning of the Big Gun at Vickers Sheffield[10] The Big Bug,[3] From the Tops of the Furnaces.

[20] While sketching a Leeds munitions factory, Pennell recalled encountering a hostile crowd and having to escape with help from the local police.

But Pennell found it too horrific to stay; as a peaceful Quaker he loathed the destruction wrought by war and, finding the scenes in France unbearable, he quickly left.

'Owing to a combination of unfortunate circumstances, the artist, to his own great regret, found himself, as he confesses unable to make any pictorial record of what he saw there'.

"[26] Pennell returned to England, from the aborted 1916 French war assignment, then onto America with wife Elizabeth, where he was authorised by the U.S. Government to make records of their war effort, similar to as he had undertaken in England; In The Dry Dock, 1917[22] The Pennells spent time in Philadelphia but didn't settle; Joseph traveled, lectured, and worked in Washington, D.C. organising the Pennell's Whistler collection, bequeathed to the Library of Congress in 1917 (The papers remained in storage in London until the end of the War) and in 1921 the couple moved to Brooklyn, New York.