Santa Maria La Blanca, Toledo, from Castilian Days

Joseph Pennell · 1903

Medium

Litho crayon with erasing and stumping, heightened with touches of white gouache, on cream textured transfer paper

Original size

28.3 × 21.7 cm (11 3/16 × 8 9/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Santa Maria La Blanca rises from Joseph Pennell's 1903 drawing with the quiet authority of a building that has survived centuries of reinvention — Moorish synagogue, Christian church, monument — its horseshoe arches rendered in soft, atmospheric grey. Pennell was among the most celebrated printmakers of his era, a Philadelphia-born draughtsman who spent much of his career documenting the architecture of Europe before it changed or disappeared. This work was created for an illustrated edition of John Hay's travel memoir *Castilian Days*, and Pennell's chosen technique — litho crayon worked with stumping and erasing, then lifted with white gouache — gives the interior a hushed, almost ghostly light that photography of the period could never have achieved. He was less interested in architectural record than in mood, and Toledo's ancient monuments responded to that instinct particularly well. Pennell was a protégé and close friend of James McNeill Whistler, whose influence on his approach to tone and atmosphere is evident throughout the *Castilian Days* series. This hand-painted oil reproduction translates Pennell's delicate tonal work into the warmth and physical presence of oil on canvas, bringing the contemplative stillness of the original into a form made to live on a wall.