Brooklyn Bridge

Having established himself in London as an etcher of urban architectural views, Joseph Pennell returned to the United States in 1917 and turned his attention to watercolors of New York subjects. This work is probably one of a series of twenty views titled Out of a Brooklyn Window that Pennell exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum’s 1921 watercolor exhibition. The manner in which Pennell constructed the composition of abbreviated areas of dark and light forms recalls the compositional methods of his English friend and mentor James McNeill Whistler.