The Park Gate c. 1903 - 1906

This is "The Park Gate" by Joseph Pennell, it's an etching on paper. Look at the layering, how he’s built up these tiny, nervous lines to create an image of a London park gate. It's kind of amazing when you think about it, the amount of detail he gets with such a limited palette. I wonder what Pennell was thinking about as he made this print. Did he want to capture a fleeting moment, or the spirit of London? Maybe he was just obsessed with line. Artists often work in dialogue with one another, it makes me think of Whistler, and his etchings of London. Each mark, each line tells us something about the artist's hand. I like how the tree almost merges with the building. It's as if the city and nature are having a conversation. It makes me think about how the artist makes marks, and then those marks make a place, and that place then makes us feel something. Artists borrow, steal, and transform each other's ideas across time. We build on the past, and that's how art evolves.