Within the Furnaces 1916

Joseph Pennell made this drawing, Within the Furnaces, with graphite or charcoal, building up a sooty interior that’s somewhere between a factory and Piranesi's prisons. Look at how the marks are layered—the lines are so frenetic. I can feel Pennell, standing there, sketching rapidly as if he were trying to capture the impermanence of the scene before it disappeared in a puff of smoke. I imagine he must have been overwhelmed by the scale of the industrial space, maybe even frightened by the furnace's intense heat and clamor. The scene almost threatens to dissolve into pure abstraction. The man-made hellscape brings to mind other artists—the dark visions of Goya or the industrial landscapes of the German Expressionists. Artists are always in conversation with one another, riffing on ideas and images across time. It's a reminder that art is not made in a vacuum but through engagement with each other. Like a furnace feeding on coal, so does art feed off art!