Colon: The American Quarter

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, "The afternoon I arrived I spent in the American town of Colon. Every house is Japanese in feeling, screened in black wire outlined with white wooden frames, to keep out the flies and mosquitos that are no longer there. I believe the original design was French, and some of the houses were built by the French. The houses are shaded by a wood of palms; throught this wandered well-made roads. There were not smells, no flies--nothing that one finds in all the other tropical and semitropical countries."