Joseph Pennell Biography

Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1857   Died: New York, New York 1926
Pennell was born in Philadelphia, and first studied there, but like his compatriot and friend, James McNeill Whistler, he afterwards went to Europe and made his home in London. He produced numerous books (many of them in collaboration with his wife, Elizabeth Robins Pennell), but his chief distinction is as an original etcher and lithographer, and notably as an illustrator. Their close acquaintance with Whistler led the Pennells to undertake a biography of that artist in 1906, and, after some litigation with his executrix on the right to use his letters, the book was published in 1908.
oseph Pennell: Commonly referred to as the 'Dean of American Printmakers' no individual artist had as much influence upon the shaping of early twentieth century American art as Joseph Pennell.