New York, New York: The City as Muse in American Art September 19, 2003-February 18, 2004 From a vantage point that floats above the scene, Pennell makes the tiny forms on the street emerge like wisps of clouds out of an empty foreground that counterbalances the void of the large, open sky above. Carefully rendered passages of light and dark define the details of the buildings and the overall composition, conveying the architectural grandeur of midtown Manhattan. Pennell’s approach subtly transforms an everyday scene into an aesthetic one. Pennell, who had lived in London since 1884, was an intimate colleague and ardent admirer of James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). In works like Forty-second Street, one of twenty-eight etchings in the New York Series of 1904, Pennell emulated the legendary expatriate American artist’s etching style, with its delicate lines, sophisticated sense of compositional balance, and diminutive scale.