Minneapolis Institute of Art

The End of the Day, Gatun Lock

Joseph Pennell; Publisher: Ketterlinus Lithographic Company

Date

1912

Medium

Transfer lithograph

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Joseph Pennell prided himself on immortalizing the world's great industrial behemoths, but he believed his life would not be complete unless he could chronicle the greatest wonder of them all—the building of the Panama Canal. Photographs show him wandering the site in his tweeds, campstool in hand. He chanced to capture this amazing scene at quitting time, as the workers were being hauled, clinging to a chain, out of eighty-five-foot-deep Gatun Lock. No one could imagine it—and I had only a minute to see it, Pennell wrote. He sketched such scenes on special coated transfer paper and executed the prints on lithographic stones back home in Philadelphia. United States, Americas

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