In the Red Room
Date1884
Artist
Joseph Pennell
(American printmaker, illustrator, and author, 1857–1926)
Illustration Citation"The White House," by E. V. Smalley, in The Century Magazine, April 1884
MediumInk on illustration board
Dimensionssheet: 15 × 12 11/16 in. (38.1 × 32.2 cm)
Credit LineGift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1978
Object number1978-107
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextJournalist E. V. Smalley's Scribner's article is a historic overview and aesthetic appreciation of the White House. Joseph Pennell's illustration faithfully renders the details of Smalley's description of the Red Room, capturing "a handsome embroidered fire-screen...and...an imposing carved-wood mantel of thirteenth century style, set off with tiling of tortoise-shell glass." One critic noted about Pennell that "as the depicter of architectural bits and of picturesque nooks and corners he stands pre-eminent."Pennell studied at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He was known as a writer and teacher as well as a printmaker and illustrator. Among his first works, in Century Magazine for William Dean Howells' Tuscan Cities, were was followed by a series on English cathedrals, the first of his copious travel illustrations. George Bernard Shaw and Henry James were among the authors whose work featured his illustrations. He was known for his illustrations of the Panama Canal and, during World War I, European battlefronts and munitions factories. He recorded scenes of New York City's architecture and vistas, noting that the Grand Canyon had nothing to surpass a city "cleft by the canyon of Broadway." Pennell was a champion of craftsmanship and resisted what he saw as any form of commericialization that threatened artistic quality.
