Book Information:
| Title | The Adventures of an Illustrator |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Mostly in Following His Authors in America & Europe |
| Author | Pennell, Joseph |
| Publisher | Little, Brown, and Company |
| Publish Date | 1925 |
| ISBN | |
| Pages | 372 |
| Binding | Hardcover |
| Notes | Mr. Pennell's "Adventures" began with his earliest years, for, as he says, "I was always an illustrator," and as a child he looked at things with an artist's eye. His art work started at school, in Philadelphia, and though after graduation he went into business to make money, he found himself making illustrations instead, and soon abandoned business for art, which, with writing on art, has since been his profession. His work, of which this book is the story, has been recognized, both abroad and at home, as of the first rank, and he here describes his own aims and methods and those of the illustrators who have made American illustration universally known. His Adventures with authors began in 1880, with Charles Godfrey Leland and Maurice Francis Egan, in Philadelphia. Since then his work has taken him over most of the civilized world. With George W. Cable he explored Louisiana. Abroad, he traveled and worked in Italy with William Dean Howells and Vernon Lee, and later with Maurice Hewlett. Henry James and F. Marion Crawford were other writers with whom he was associated in that country, and he was an active participant in the brilliant artistic life of Florence and Venice, which centered around Devenneck, Böcklin and other artists of the eighties. He and his wife also traveled in Italy and described their Adventures in The Century and Harper's. Later, he settled more permanently in England, where his illustrations for Mrs. Van Rensselaer's English Cathedrals brought him into contact with English cathedral life. At that period also he illustrated articles by almost every prominent English writer of travel. Naturally, his book is full of interesting comment on these men - Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Wells, Shaw, Hamerton, for instance - and also on his fellow artists with whom he worked and played. He introduced Aubrey Beardsley to the art world and knew Whistler intimately, so intimately indeed, that he, with Mrs. Pennell, was that famous man's authorized biographer. Then came his sojourn in France and his drawings of the famous French cathedrals to illustrate Mrs. Pennell's text, followed by Adventures in Greece, Spain, Russia, Dalmatia, Holland, and Belgium, which prepared him for the adventure of discovering the picturesqueness of that Wonder of Work, the Panama Canal, of which he made an important series of lithographs. Since then much of his life has been devoted to recording, with etching needle and lithographic chalk, the industrial life of America and Europe. When the War came, Mr. Pennell's services were in demand by the governments of England, France and America in turn, and his story of his Adventures as an artist at the front and among the great munition plants is different from those of other artists and authors. At present his is living in Brooklyn and finding New York full of beauty and inspiration. The text for The Adventures of an illustrator is piqant and racy, expressing in downright terms Mr. Pennell's views of people and things, is full of interesting anecdotes of great men in arts and letters. Much practical information on the technique of illustration is in the book. The volume is profusely illustrated with Mr. Pennell's drawings, etchings, and lithographs, many of them reproduced for the first time, as well as by portraits of authors with whom he has worked, together with examples of the work of other artists of Europe and America. The typesetting and printing of the volume is being done by the Printing House of William Edwin Rudge under the close supervision of Mr. Pennell, who has designed and arranged the form and makeup of the book with the greatest care and attention to every detail in it. |
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| TRRF Call No. | FA-00041 |
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