In the Works, Homestead 1908

Joseph Pennell made this print, In the Works, Homestead, and, for me, the title says it all. It's a hazy scene of industry, caught in a fugitive moment. I can almost feel Pennell, standing there, plate in hand, rushing to capture the scene as smoke billows and trains approach. Look at the delicate strokes, like whispers across the metal surface. You can sense his anxiety, trying to fix something that’s always changing, always in progress. I feel like he wants to honour the site, but he also wants to capture the industrial dynamism, with all the sooty grit and uncertain atmospheres. It reminds me of some Whistler’s etchings, how they hover between realism and something more abstract, more felt. These works really get at that very modern feeling of trying to hold onto something as it’s slipping away. We are all ‘in the works’ and always will be.