The gates of Pedro Miguel Lock

Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926 · 1912

"I went to the Panama Canal because I believed the greatest engineer work the world has ever seen would give me the greatest artistic inspiration of my life. I went because I believed that at the Canal I should see the Wonder of Work, the Picturesqueness of Labour, realized on the grandest scale. I believed that if but little of all I had heard of the huge lock, the great dam, were true, on the Isthmus of Panama, I should find the most marvelous subjects of all time, so risked it - a risk of fifteen thousand miles, for possible picturesqueness. I hope my work may serve as a record of the building of the Canal, - a record of subjects, which exist no longer, but which in my lithographs, I hope may to the best of my ability, be preserved - a memory of the greatest work of modern times, - a record of the greatest American achievement of all time." Joseph Pennell.