Dinner Time, Gatun Lock

Pennell, a Philadelphia-born Quaker, spent the first two decades of his career abroad, living primarily in London, where he became a close associate of Whistler. This lithograph was made after the artist toured Panama and looked at the engineering works in progress for the Panama Canal. Of this subject, he wrote, "Between Mount Hope and Gatan is much more fo the swamp and much more abandoned machinery, but the Canal is not to be seen from the railroad, or any evidence of it, till the train stops at the staion of Old Gatun, with its workmen's dwellings crowning the hillside...At the station of Grun--the first time I stopped--I saw the workmen--in decorative fashion--coming to the surface for dinner. The lithograph was made from a temporary bridge spanning the locks and looking toward Colon...The French Canal is in the extreme distance, now used by our engineers."