>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. >> But also, as you may know, this program is part of a series of webinars connected with the Library's exhibition, Echo's of the Great War, American Experiences of World War I, which is on view here through January, 2019. Today's presentation will last approximately 30 minutes, with time after that for our presenter to answer questions. You can communicate with me and with Katherine Blood, our presenter by the Chadwell, and unfortunately it looks like not with your [inaudible], as I said before we began, you're welcome to send me a note and I'll share it out. I'll collect questions as well for Katherine on the chat and we'll share them with her at the end of the session. So, please think about what you'd like to ask her as the session goes on. We will post the recording of this presentation to the Library's website once it has been captioned, and with that, I will introduce Katherine, so today's presenter is curator Katherine Blood, who works with the Library's world class collection of artists prints, drawings, and posters in its Prints and Photographs Division. And Katherine, that makes you the presenter now. Her exhibition and publications projects have specialized in modern to contemporary graphic art by American, Hispanic and Japanese artists. Today's webinar is based on a public gallery talk that Katherine gave earlier this year as part of our programing for the Echoes exhibit. Katherine, thank you so much for leading today's webinar. >> Thank you, Naomi and to everyone joining us today. As Naomi mentioned, today's discussion is based on a gallery talk I gave earlier this year focusing on one particular World War I drawing by artist, Joseph Pennell, and we'll be looking closely at this in a minute, but let's start by thinking a little bit about visual communication at the time. When the U.S. entered the war on April 6, 1917, there was a thriving visual culture in full swing. For example, images were circulating widely in illustrated magazines and newspapers and photography was well established by this time with more and more people taking pictures with their own personal cameras. But World War I marked another notable leap forward in the history of visual communication, and this was thanks in large part to the extraordinary proliferation of war posters and other images made by some of the best artists of the day, and also the volume at which they were produced and ways they were disseminated. On screen are some examples from the Library's extensive collection and you can see they were tilted at getting audiences to feel, respond and act or participate in various ways. And while many of the images appeal to notions of patriotism, honor and courage, others tap into fear and hatred of the enemy. Some of the major recurring themes include recruitment, like the first several examples here in the top row. Also, bond drives to raise funds in support of the war, home front service and various forms of troop support from knitting to donating books for soldier's camp libraries. That's one of my favorites in the second row, the second one in, by Charles Buckles Falls. And you can explore over 1,900 World War I posters in the Library's online catalog and we'll show you where you can search for and study them in a little while. Everything you'll see on screen today, with one exception that I'll point out, comes from the Library's collection of original artist's prints, posters, drawings and photographs. Today we're going to be taking a deep look at an indelible and famous artwork by American artist, Joseph Pennell. The Library of Congress is fortunate to preserve both Pennell's concept drawing, which we see on the left, and his related Liberty Bond poster of which over 500,000 copies were printed in 1918. We'll also take a look at some of the broader context and forces that came together in launching a virtual armada of compelling wartime posters, including this well-known example. As a gateway for that discussion, here's how the drawing was presented in the physical exhibition, the Echoes exhibition, where it hung alongside some excellent company. That's Cheryl Regan gazing up at the artwork. She's our Echoes Exhibit Director, and let me also credit our lead curators for that show, Ryan Reft and Sara Conway Lance [phonetic] who worked with a large team, including myself. If you look at the wall behind Cheryl, you may spot some familiar faces, and perhaps this one in particular. James Montgomery Flagg's, "I want you for U.S. Army" with his truly iconic Uncle Sam based, according to the artist, on his own face. Both Pennell and Flagg were among the many artists to contribute their work for the division of pictorial publicity within Woodrow Wilson's Committee on Public Information. It was this man, George Creel, who headed the committee. He was a journalist and politician who believed that art could play a crucial role in winning the hearts and minds of the American public, to build support behind the war. And his idea was that whereas people might miss or bypass text or films or community meetings, even the most indifferent eye, and that's his phrase, even the most indifferent eye could not fail to encounter posters and billboards. In his project memoir called, "How we advertised in American," Creel stressed that he was after no less than the very best work by the best artists and in his words, "Posters into which the masters of the pen and brush have poured heart and soul, as well as genius." And he continues, "Looking the field over, we decided upon Charles Dana Gibson as the man best fitted to lead the army of artists." I like that he thought of them as an army. "And on April 17, 1917, this splendid American entered the service as a volunteer." So that would have been just a little over a week after America entered the war on April 6. And Creel made a very savvy choice when he tapped Charles Dana Gibson to run the committee's Division of Pictorial Publicity. Gibson was a very popular leading and well-connected illustrator, celebrated for his creation of the Gibson Girl, and you can see a classic example of that, top left. As president of the Society of American Illustrators, Gibson was well placed to rally the troops, the artists troops, and when he famously urged his fellow artists to draw till it hurts, in support of the war, he was talking to such peers as James Montgomery Flagg, Howard Chandler Christy, Edward Penfield, Joseph Pennell and many others. By January of 1918, Gibson reported that the artists were meeting every Friday at their New York headquarters on 5th Avenue to review projects submitted by different government departments. Afterwards, Gibson said they adjourned to Key's Chop House for dinner. The ranks swelled to 300 volunteer artists who produced more than 1,400 designs including some 700 posters that were spread throughout the country, and they were everywhere, on the streets, in offices, schools, theaters, libraries, street cars, shop windows and other public spaces. So, in the flow of your daily life, you would have inevitably encountered these images. And we have some great period photo documentation of the posters in situ, like the image we were just looking at of the billboard on the street and the scene from a naval recruiting office. And just look at all of the posters plastered on the surrounding walls. Many of these are represented in the Library as collection of original World War I posters and if you'll just take a second and kind of memorize those back walls and hold those images in your mind, I'll show you a few closer color images of the posters from our collection, including Howard Chandler Christy's classic GI, "Wish I were a man, I'd join the Navy." When Pennell joined the Division of Pictorial Publicity as an associated chairman, he was about 60 years old, so a mature, successful artist, who like Gibson and Flagg, had helped to find what would be known as the golden age of illustration. From the 1880's to the 1920's and this is square during Pennell's active years. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1857 and he trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. He later taught at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York City. Pennell died in Brooklyn, New York in 1926. This pictorials' style portrait shows him in 1922 when he was in his mid-60's. During his long career, Pennell gained acclaim for his work as an illustrator and print maker. He published treatises about drawing and print making and taught, lectured and exhibited widely. He was a prolific illustrator of journal articles and books by the likes of Henry James, Washington Irving and William Dean Howells. On screen is one of the drawings he made for Henry James' 1909 book, Italian Hours. Pennell and his journalist wife, Elizabeth Robbins Pennell often collaborated together. She would do the writing and he would illustrate and they were also devotees, friends and biographers of James McNeill Whistler. Early on, as you can see in this drawing, Pennell's work shows the clear influence of Whistler. This is an early portrait drawing by Pennell of his wife in Rome in 1885. But Pennell liked to live in high rise apartments with sweeping views where Pennell could make drawings like the delicate watercolor you see here called the, Out of my London Window. Pennell is also one of the early artists to depict skyscrapers as fine art subjects beginning around 1904, and here's his drawing of the Flat Iron building in 1908, only six years after it was built. This opalescent sunset watercolor on the right shows the stunning view from their Brooklyn home. They made the move from Philadelphia to Brooklyn in 1921. And you may be able to see a bit sketchily in the distance on the left, there's the Statue of Liberty under the clouds. Pennell is often called the dean of American print making and he was a skillful accomplished lithographer and etcher, who had a lifelong fascination with industrial subjects, a theme he called the Wonder of Work. And by this he meant pictures of architecture, engineering, construction, all kinds of industry. He found these subjects profoundly compelling and became gifted at presenting them as picturesque, an idea that was traditionally associated with artist renderings with nature, and beautiful landscapes rather than urban cityscapes. So, we see a Chicago skyline, the standard oil building in New York, and a dramatic rendering of a grain elevator in Hamburg, Germany. This lithograph is from Pennell's celebrated series documenting the construction of the Panama Canal. And images of people are somewhat rare in his work, and usually in service to the larger composition to indicate scale or bustling activity. Though Pennell considered this grouping of workers particularly decorative. It was based on an eye witness moment. When the Panama Pacific International Exhibition was mounted in 1915 to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, Pennell shared a juried exhibition of over 2,000 prints and he had a room dedicated to some 150 of his own. And here he is looking very intrepid at the construction site and that little sign is basically saying that you walk here at your own peril. And here are a couple more images showing Pennell in action. These were both taken at the Chicago Stockyards around 1918. One shows Pennell surrounded by a crowd near what looks like a warehouse and the other he's sitting on the balcony and he seems to have had a sketchbook with him always, many portraits of him showing him clutching a sketchbook. Our collection also has many examples of his sketchbooks. By the time Pennell came to the Division of Pictorial Publicity in 1917, he had already built strong credentials and a solid body of artworks documenting war preparation in England, which was his home base with his wife for many years. On screen from left to right are lithographs from his series of war work in England, first in England, then in America. It's fascinating to know that Pennell was raised as a Quaker and was personally opposed to war, but for his ongoing exploration of his wonder of work theme, the chance to document war preparation was the opportunity of a lifetime, it was irresistible to him. With government backing in both England and America, Pennell was granted special access to sensitive sites including shipyards and ammunition factories. And here's a close-up detail of the Censor Stamp from the [inaudible] of Pennell's submarine in drydock. The stamp is on the left showing that the artwork had passed scrutiny by the Philadelphia Navy yard sensor on November 7, 1917, and that Pennell was not giving away any state secrets by distributing this image. Pennell was vocal, he made no bones about the tension between a boring war and being enthralled by its technology and scale. Pennell's wartime artworks were exhibited at multiple venues including the Brooklyn Museum in 1917, where the accompanying catalog boasted introductions by H.G Wells and Pennell. And here are quotes from both. To me, I think Wells really reflected the work well and understood what Pennell was after. The full quote is on screen, but I'll just read the last bit, this is on the right. "He gives us the splendors and immensities of forge and gun-pit, furnace and mine-shaft. He shows you how great they are and how terrible." And for his part, Pennell's quote on the left expresses his ambivalence. He wrote, "It is the working of the great machinery and the great mills which I find so inspiring, so impressive, and if only the engines turned out were engines of peace, how much better would the world be?" Now, this is the first of two Liberty-Loan posters Pennell designed. This one was for the third Liberty-Loan, the Washington Post and the New York Times on March 10, 1918 both published articles that reported a planned 9 million posters were to be designed and distributed by various artists and they would be distributed in the U.S., Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Cuba, The Philippines and France. There were four Liberty Bond drives that by the end of the war had raised more than $17 million, and that was just an unheard-of figure at the time. And here's an extraordinary statistic, out of an estimated 24 million households at the time, some 20 million individuals bought Liberty War Bonds. This poster is a classic example of Pennell's work, which typically combined a documentary with a picturesque, but still friendly based and eye witnessed observation. His next in line, for the fourth Liberty-Loan poster was an entirely different animal and a real departure for Pennell. It depicts a horrific scene with the Statue of Liberty in ruins and New York City in flames while under attack by enemy planes. His idea was to show, "New York City bombed, shot down, burning, blown up by an enemy. A fleet of airplanes fly over lower Manhattan, flames and smoke envelope the burning skyscrapers. In the foreground, Liberty from a pile of ruins rises headless on her pedestal, her torch shattered." So, it's a little difficult to see the planes unless you're in the presence of the original drawing, though they are clearly visible in the print poster and here are details from both the drawing up top. The planes in sort of faint light-blue are marked by the blue arrow and I hope you can see them, descending down diagonally toward the left. The poster detailed below, they are much clearer. Within the conflagration, other details emerge including a submarine heading toward the city skyline with a sagging bridge in the distance and poor Liberty's disembodied head nearby. We also see sunken or sinking ships with the American flag beginning to go underwater. The lower margin of the drawing shows Pennell's title and signature, indicates his dual role as draftsman and printmaker and is annotated in his hand watercolor sketch of idea. But the actual spark came earlier. Pennell gave a detailed account of the project in his 1918 book called Joseph Pennell's Liberty-Loan Poster, and in it he describes making the initial sketch pictured on the left as reproduced from this book while riding the train back from a New York meeting of the Committee on Public Information. And you can see he's laid in some color indications like red in the sky. Once he arrived home in Philadelphia, Pennell made another drawing, which he then worked up into a lithographic print and this is the image that you see here on the right. And Pennell wrote that this is the design he submitted successfully for jury selection. News coverage of the time reported that Pennell's was one of 10 artist designs chosen and that 10 million posters would be printed all together. Over 500,000 copies were to be made of Pennell's poster alone. The Library's collection includes some 30 examples of Pennell's working materials for the poster and so far, that initial train sketch on the left, which I've reproduced from the book I mentioned, has not been located in a collection. I'm holding out hope and if anyone runs across it, please let us know. We do have the drawing and resulting lithograph shown on the right. We also have this sketchbook. It's small, it's a little sketchbook in which Pennell is apparently trying out titles and the wording he later settled on was, his idea was to say, now remember the scene of conflagration, "Buy Liberty Bonds or you will see this." So, this was later softened to a more poetic alternative for the printed color poster, as we'll see. Based on the available evidence and in studying the original artworks themselves, the sequence starts in black and white with the train sketch first, followed by the worked-up drawing and lithograph and then on to full color. On the far left is a proof of the black and white lithograph with lavish watercolor added by hand. It looks like a drawing almost. Next is Pennell's full-scale watercolor drawing for which the title differed somewhat from the final posters so, "Lest Liberty Parish From The Face Of The Earth," became, "That Liberty Shall Not Parish From the Earth, Buy Liberty Bonds." Furthermore, and far less well known, Pennell explored a similar concept in his second drawing dated July 4, 1918, which moves the venue from New York to Philadelphia. The drawings are a comparable size and made in similar style and color palate, and similar media. The violence in my eyes is intensified by adding a terrified crowd running in front of Independence Hall and a prone figure bleeding in the foreground. I've not found much in the way of discussion or explanation for this Philadelphia version, but both drawings are listed in the unpublished Catalogue Raisonne of Pennell's drawings and paintings by Louis A. Wuerth, under the heading, "War Poster Drawings." As I've mentioned, these phantasmagorical images were extremely unusable for Pennell, very specific to their purpose in time. There is a well-known story about a meeting of the National Arts Club in 1920, not long after the war, during which Pennell took artist, George Bellows to task on the issue of authenticity. He singled out Bellows amid showing the execution of British Red Cross nurse, Edith Cavell, who helped allied prisoners escape during the war, saying that the work would be much more compelling and truly authentic if Bellows had seen the event with his own eyes. Bellows rejoinder was that it was true, he had not seen the event, but nor, as far as he knew, had Leonardo been present at the Last Supper. On screen is Bellow's dramatic lithograph and he also made a large-scale painting which envisions an angelic Edith Cavell descending a staircase while a firing squad waits in the shadows below at the lower right corner. And of course, this argument, Pennell's argument becomes somewhat ironic in light of the Liberty Bond poster designs we have been looking at. But there is certainly an anomaly in Pennell's broader body of work. Right up until his death in 1926, Pennell continued making prints and drawings based on eye witness observation and reflecting a changing world. During this late period, he made a series of beautiful watercolor drawings, you saw this one earlier and it's another one of my very favorites. But he made hundreds of them and they're incredibly beautiful. He seems to have been making them really for his own pleasure. And they're capturing, many of them, the changing light, weather and activity on the East River, which he could see from his Brooklyn apartment high point. And as the Bellows' story suggests, I think it must be said that anyone who said he's Pennell [inaudible] will bump up against his notoriously argumentative, difficult and sometimes [inaudible] nature. And this was remarkable enough that it is mentioned in his obituaries, along with long lists of honors and achievements including his tireless, passionate, constant advocacy of art and artists. Pennell really gave his life to this and he left his entire estate to the Library of Congress. So, we have an extraordinary opportunity to study a virtually complete collection of his lithographs and etchings, about 1,900 altogether, about 4,000 of his drawings, his publications and papers, along with his wife's, their substantial collection of James McNeill Whistler art papers and [inaudible] and Elizabeth Robbins Pennell's rare cookbook collection and we also have the Pennell library. And as we've seen, Pennell's artwork reflects how he moved through history and art history in ways that uniquely reflect the first World War, as well as the construction of the Panama Canal, the rise of American cities and other key subjects. So, we would like to leave you with some resources beginning with the exhibition website for our current show, Echoes of the Great War, and also the art centric exhibition I recently co-curated with my colleagues, Sara Duke and Betsy Nahum-Miller, it's called, World War I - American Artists View the Great War. All of the exhibits, texts and images are online via the link screen, www.loc.gov/exhibits. And here's. Oh, I'm skipping ahead. You can also explore over 1,900 digitized World War I posters, as we mentioned, in our online catalog at this direct link. And of course, in person in the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division reading room. Here's a select bibliography of resources including Creel's book about the Committee on Public Information which I found very valuable during World War I, and some key resources for studying Pennell on his prints and drawings, which are also searchable in the Library's online catalog at www.loc.gov/pictures, and available for study, of course, in our reading room, along with over 76,000 photographs, prints, and drawings related to World War I. You can also send us reference questions at this ask a librarian link on screen. So, thank you so much for joining us today, and I'll hand things back to Naomi before we take questions. >> Great, thanks so much Katherine, really beautiful and fascinating work. We'd love to have you guys share some questions that Katherine can answer if you have them, but before, well while we wait for your questions, I have one myself, which is, so, you mentioned that Pennell offered the Library his entire estate, can you talk more about his relationship with the Library of Congress and why did he choose to have his work kept here? >> So, our best clue comes from his wife's biography of her husband, The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, and it turns out that their estate was headed to the New York Public Library which also is a very wonderful home. But according to Elizabeth Robbins Pennell, after seeing the Library's print room, Pennell decided he considered it the finest anywhere, this is Pennell, the finest anywhere, and still somewhat in need of more fine print, so he saw a need and around 1917 he made a new will in favor of the Library and she wrote that, according to his wife, Pennell liked the idea of placing his legacy in the Nation's Capital and in the National Institution. So, that's the short answer. >> Thanks. Again, let us know if you have questions, but I'll ask one more, which is that, you know, could you talk a little bit more about the Liberty Bond Drive, I'm not sure if you shared the statistic that you and I talked about, about the number of households in the U.S. as compared to how many participated in the bond drive, but if you haven't, it'd be great to say or to reiterate if you did, and then also tell us a little bit more about that, about the drive? >> Well so, let me just sort of give the basic sort of definition, which is that, so they were essentially, so by buying a war bond, it meant that you were essentially loaning money to the U.S. Government in support of the war, with the funds to be returned at a later date, and this was framed as a patriotic duty for every citizen from children to millionaires, everyone was expected to step up. The bonds were sold in denominations going as low as $50, and you could also buy stamps for just $.25 and buyers were given buttons, sort of, I think of them sort of like our "I voted" stickers today, to show participation and encourage others to join in. And let's see, the program was initiated by Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, and the bonds were promoted by major celebrities of the day, like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, and that statistic is really incredible. So, altogether they had raised more than $17 million for the Liberty Bond drive by the end of the war, and out of it, an estimated 24 million households at that time, some 20 million individuals bought Liberty War Bonds, so wildly successful campaign. >> Alright, thank you. So, I haven't seen any other questions, so I guess we'll close out today's session. I do want to remind everyone that this is part of the series. There will be one more of these webinars on World War I. Oh, we do have a question, from Tim Garrity. So, he says, how does Pennell's work compare with the work of other World War I era artists in other nations like Britain, Germany, France and Russia? Are there major differences? >> So, I think that you can compare Pennell's work to a British artist like Muirhead Bone. I think his work is sort of representative, picturesque, something that had fellow comparisons in Europe and certainly in England, and of course, although he felt very much an American, he spent a lot of time in Britain, was also an anglophile. So, I can mention a few of the British artists, I mentioned Muirhead Bone, James McBey, and also an extremely influential artist who worked with the British government, Dutch artist, Louis Raemaekers, whose images illustrated the Bryce report, of reported German atrocities. So, that's a great question. I could go on, but that's an essential answer. >> OK great. So, another question, this is from Ruth. She says, you pointed to the departure from Pennell's typical style that left Liberty parish departure from his typical style, so can you talk a little bit more about why he made that departure? >> So, I would love to know why, and I've looked for clues in his letters and I've looked for, I mean, I don't know why. I think that he was responding to something very specific, very, if I'm allowed to conjecture a little bit, I think a lot about this sort of tension between his being a pacifist and his being so engaged and compelled by the technology of war, I know he was distressed, disturbed, you know, so he just chose a very, what's the word I want, I don't, histrionic isn't the word I groping for, but it's an extreme, it's an extreme response, and there are other comparable posters in our collection, on that very first slide that I showed, there's a poster by John Norton, "Keep these off USA", which shows a bloody German soldier boot. So, it's one, it's one, it's a tone that's used by more than one artist, to sort of show the, show how vital it was to be engaged in these Liberty-Loan bond drives in no uncertain terms. >> Alright, well one last comment that may lead to a question, actually. So, Jerry said that the poster depicting the young woman in the Navy uniform was still in use by the Navy when I was in the service in the 70's. >> Oh wow. >> Which is interesting, but it also makes me wonder if you might speak a little bit about the legacy either of some of the images to come out of the Committee on Public Information in World War I or just a bit about the growth of marketing after the war as a result, what's the legacy of these images and effort around them? >> So, there's a really great example to sort of site in answering that question. James Montgomery Flagg's Uncle Sam, I want you for the U.S. Army, was repurposed. It was so powerful it was repurposed during World War II and if you go to our online catalog you can see the different versions, and one of them also includes a portrait of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So, I think what happened was the World War I posters, the division of pictorial publicity, this extraordinary phenomenon which was even considered by artists and critics at the time, there was a self-awareness that something special was going on, that something new was happening and that they were moving the equation forward and opening the door, and I think it was one in a series of information revolutions. I think you could look at it that way, that really things were moved forward in a way that opened the door for the future. >> Alright, well thanks for that, and thank you for this wonderful presentation. So, I'll wrap up with a few notes. One is that, as I was saying earlier, this is part of a series, and so we'll have one more webinar that will be on December 12 at 2:00 eastern. The exhibition co-curator, Ryan Reft of the Manuscript Division will discuss Charles Hamilton Houston's wartime service, and experiences as a young officer serving in a segregated military, and the influences of those experiences on his later work in civil rights including as the chief attorney for the NAACP and a mentor to Thurgood Marshall. This also was previously a gallery talk and like Katherine's, a wonderful one, so I hope you'll join us for the last of our webinar series. Today, as you may know, is Giving Tuesday, so in that spirit, I'd like to just share that some of our programs here are made possible by donations and gifts from generous citizens, so the Library of Congress has introduced a new initiative that is called, "To Spark a Lifelong Adventure of Learning." If you'd like to learn more or support this effort, you can go to loc.gov/donate. And finally, we'd love to know what you thought of today's session. If you can share your comments on the survey, we'd very much appreciate it. And, if you have a question, oh, thank you. We appreciate your participation in the webinar today, and again you'll find the recording on the World War I Exhibition website and also the Library's YouTube channel once it has been properly captioned, which should be in a few weeks. So, thank you all so much for participating. >> Thank you. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.