Joseph Pennell

Joseph Pennell ( born July 4, 1857 in Philadelphia, † April 23, 1926 in New York) was an American lithographer, illustrator and author.

Life

Pennell was born in Philadelphia and studied at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at first, but like his compatriot and friend, James McNeill Whistler, he went to Europe and moved to London (1884 ) later studied at the Slade School of Art

He produced numerous books, many in collaboration with his wife Elizabeth Robins (1855-1936), but his main focus was the illustration and lithography. Their close acquaintance with the painter Whistler brought Pannell to write a biography of the artist ( 1906). But the publication postponed by two years (1908), because of a legal dispute over the letters of the artist.

Pennell discovered in 1891 as the first, " The Soldier and the laughing girl " that Jan Vermeer must have worked because of the " photographic perspectives " with a camera obscura in the Vermeer picture.

Works (selection)

Poster, 1891

Poster for Liberty Bonds, 1918

Lulworth Cove