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 — Inside the Classic

A Diction of Disdain and Delight

Pennell’s vocabulary marks his allegiances. He calls the Woolworth Building a “moody colossus—sometimes it is fine, sometimes filthy.” The Niagara power-houses are “Greek temples” placed “just where the Greeks would have placed them,” yet he adds that “the American purist and theorist doesn’t like it.” His phrasing is deliberately provocative: purists “would not have liked Greek temples had he been Greek.” He contrasts the “wondrous works” of Niagara with the tourists who “sigh over the power-houses, delight in ginger-ale, and forget the Falls.” Such diction reveals an artist who sees beauty in utility and scorns those who cannot.

Voice and the Artist’s Presence

Pennell inserts himself into the scenes he describes. Of the Everett House demolition, he writes: “I saw it one cold November night and made the sketch on my way to a dinner party … The dinner waited till I got a sketch done, for I knew the construction man would not.” This anecdote does more than explain the drawing’s origin; it establishes the artist as a figure who prioritizes his work over social obligations. The first-person voice is consistent: “I did not draw the temples, but the temples being built, which was interesting.” He is not a detached observer but an active participant, choosing what to depict based on his own criteria.

Structure: The Image Precedes the Text

The book’s organization is driven by the plates, not by narrative. Each section pairs a reproduction with Pennell’s notes, which vary in length from a few sentences to several paragraphs. The notes do not describe the image systematically; instead, they offer context, opinion, or memory. For example, the note on Butte, Montana, begins with a sweeping claim—“Butte is the most pictorial place in America”—then moves to a detailed description of the town’s appearance at different times of day. The structure mirrors the artist’s method: he responds to what he sees, and the text follows the image rather than the other way around.

Recurring Details: Smoke, Mist, and Light

Pennell repeatedly returns to atmospheric effects. At Anaconda, the smelter’s smoke is “an endless cloud pall of heavy, drifting, falling smoke,” which he calls “more wonderful” than a volcanic eruption because “this volcano is man’s work.” In Butte, the town is “half revealed, half concealed in smoke and mist and steam,” with “strange shafts struggle up to the light.” The Niagara power-houses are seen through “great overflows of water gushing from the rock.” These details are not incidental; they are the pictorial qualities that attracted Pennell. He consistently chooses moments when industry and atmosphere combine to create what he considers a sublime spectacle.

Readers should approach Pictures of the Wonder of Work as a record of one artist’s selective vision. Pennell’s notes are not neutral captions but extensions of his aesthetic judgments. The book rewards attention to his word choices and the way he frames each scene, as these reveal the criteria behind his celebrated images. It is a document of how an early twentieth-century artist saw—and wanted others to see—the industrial world.

Pennell’s love of honest, work-scarred structures makes me think of wandering through a quiet estate library, where the dust settles on shelves that hold generations of patient marks. Notes on the Art Treasures at Penicuik House Midlothian — Themes and Context once gave me that same hush, a sense of things made carefully, not for show, but because someone needed to leave their handprint behind.