The Great Tower: Pig-Iron 1916

Joseph Pennell made this drawing, The Great Tower: Pig-Iron, using sweeping gestural marks to depict an enormous industrial interior. Pennell lets the lines and tones fall where they may. The composition is a tangle of infrastructure and human activity. Look at the pile of pig iron in the foreground, built up with many small, overlapping strokes. The drawing has a beautiful, almost dizzying sense of perspective that recedes far into the distance. It’s like a Piranesi etching, but instead of Roman ruins, we have the ruins of modernity. The way Pennell lets the subject matter emerge through the marks reminds me of the paintings of J.M.W. Turner. Both artists embraced ambiguity and sought to capture the sublime in their chosen mediums. Pennell is not trying to give us a photograph, but rather to show us how industry feels, its immensity and relentlessness.