



Produced by Chuck Greif (This file was produced from images
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IN THE

LAND OF TEMPLES

BY JOSEPH PENNELL

[Illustration: colophon]

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN




JOSEPH PENNELL'S PICTURES IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES




JOSEPH PENNELL'S

PICTURES OF
THE PANAMA CANAL.

_FIFTH EDITION._

Reproductions of a series of Lithographs made
by him on the Isthmus of Panama, together
with Impressions and Notes by the Artist.
Price 5s. net.

THE LIFE OF JAMES
MCNEILL WHISTLER

By E. R. and J. PENNELL.

Fifth and Revised Edition, with 96 pp.
of Illustrations. Pott 4to.
Price 12s. 6d. net.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.

Copies of the lithographs reproduced in this
volume, limited to fifty proofs each, size 16 by 22 in.,
may be obtained through the Publisher, at
L3 3 0 net each.




JOSEPH PENNELL'S PICTURES IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES

REPRODUCTIONS OF A SERIES OF LITHOGRAPHS MADE BY HIM IN THE LAND OF
TEMPLES, MARCH-JUNE 1913, TOGETHER WITH IMPRESSIONS AND NOTES BY THE
ARTIST

[Illustration: colophon]

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT GO.

COPYRIGHT

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 1915.

TO
R. M. DAWKINS

LATE DIRECTOR
OF THE BRITISH
SCHOOL AT ATHENS
WHO SHOWED ME
WHERE I SHOULD
FIND THE TEMPLES

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY B. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BRUNSWICK STREET,
STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.




NOTES--ON MY LITHOGRAPHS IN THE LAND OF TEMPLES


I WENT to Greece for two reasons. First, because I wanted to see Greece
and what remained of her glory--to see if the greatest work of the past
impressed me as much as the greatest work of the present--and to try to
find out which was the greater--the more inspiring. And second, I went
because I was told by a Boston authority that I was nothing but a
ragtime sketcher, couldn't see Greek art and couldn't draw it if I did.

I have been there--and did what I saw in my own way. To me Greece was
wonderful and was beautiful, but anyone can see that--and can rave over
it with appropriate quotations from appropriate authors. I know no Greek
and have scarce read a translation. I say this regretfully--I wish I
had--I should have seen more. I know, however, if I had not before seen
the greatest art of the rest of Europe, I could not have been so moved
as I was by what I saw in the Land of Temples, the land whence we have
derived most of our ideas, ideals, and inspirations.

I drew the things that interested me--and it was, and is, a great
delight to me to be told by those who have, some of them, spent their
lives studying Greeks and Greece, that I have given the character of the
country. What impressed me most was the great feeling of the Greeks for
site in placing their temples and shrines in the landscape--so that they
not only became a part of it, but it leads up to them. And though the
same architectural forms were used, each temple was so placed that it
told from afar by sea or land, a goal for pilgrims--a shrine for
worshippers to draw near to--yet each had a character of its own--always
the same, yet ever differing. I know, I am sorry to say, little of
proportion, of scale, of heights, of lengths, but what I saw, with my
own eyes, was the way these monuments were part of the country--never
stuck about anyhow--always composed--always different--and they were
built with grand ideas of composition, impressiveness, and arrangement.
Has there been any change in the black forest before Aegina--the "wine
dark sea" at Sunium--the "shining rocks" at Delphi--the grim cliffs of
the Acropolis?--these prove in their various ways that the Greeks were
great artists.

These were the things I saw. Had I known more I might have seen
less--for it seems to me that most artists who have gone to Greece have
been so impressed with what they have been told to see, that--there are,
of course, great exceptions--they have looked at the land with a
foot-rule, a translation, and a dictionary, and they have often been
interfered with by these aids. I went ignorant of where to go--or what
to see. When I got to Athens I fell among friends, who answered my only
question that "I wanted to see temples that stood up." They told me
where they were--and there they were. And for this information, which
resulted in my seeing these sites and making these lithographs, I want
to thank many people, but above all Mr. R. M. Dawkins, late Director of
the British School at Athens, who, now that he has seen the work, agrees
with others that it has something of the character and romance of the
country. If it has those qualities, they are what I went out to see--and
having seen them--and I have tried to express them--I know I can see
more, if I have the chance in the future in the Wonder of Work of my
time, for in our great works to-day we are only carrying on the
tradition of the great works of the past. I have seen both, and it is
so.

JOSEPH PENNELL.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ILLUSTRATIONS START AT TAORMINA, PROCEED AROUND SICILY--THENCE TO
ITALY, AND ARE CONTINUED IN GREECE.

AETNA OVER TAORMINA I

THE THEATRE, SEGESTA II

THE TEMPLE OVER THE CANYON, SEGESTA III

FROM TEMPLE TO TEMPLE, GIRGENTI IV

THE COLUMNS OF CASTOR AND POLLUX, GIRGENTI V

SUNRISE BEHIND THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI VI

THE TEMPLE BY THE SEA; TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI VII

THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD ON THE WALL FROM WITHIN, GIRGENTI VIII

THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD ON THE WALL FROM WITHOUT, GIRGENTI IX

COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF JUNO, GIRGENTI X

THE TEMPLES ON THE WALL, GIRGENTI XI

THE TEMPLE OF JUNO FROM BELOW, GIRGENTI XII

PAESTUM. MORNING MIST XIII

PAESTUM. EVENING XIV

CORINTH TOWARDS THE GULF XV

ACRO-CORINTH FROM CORINTH XVI

OLYMPIA FROM THE HILLSIDE XVII

THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER. EVENING XVIII

THE ACROPOLIS FROM THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER, ATHENS XIX

THE WAY UP THE ACROPOLIS XX

DOWN FROM THE ACROPOLIS XXI

SUNRISE OVER THE ACROPOLIS XXII

STORM BEHIND THE ACROPOLIS XXIII

THE PROPYLAEA, ATHENS XXIV

THE PORTICO OF THE PARTHENON XXV

THE PARTHENON FROM THE GATEWAY XXVI

THE FACADE OF THE PARTHENON. SUNSET XXVII

THE FALLEN COLUMN, ATHENS XXVIII

THE LITTLE FETE, ATHENS XXIX

THE GREAT FETE, ATHENS XXX

THE TEMPLE OF NIKE, ATHENS XXXI

THE TEMPLE OF NIKE FROM MARS HILL, ATHENS XXXII

THE ODEON, ATHENS XXXIII

THE STREET OF THE TOMBS, ATHENS XXXIV

ELEUSIS. THE PAVEMENT OF THE TEMPLE XXXV

AEGINA XXXVI

AEGINA ON ITS MOUNTAIN TOP XXXVII

THE SHINING ROCKS, DELPHI XXXVIII

THE TREASURY OF ATHENS, DELPHI XXXIX

THE WINE DARK SEA. SUNIUM XL




INTRODUCTION.


IT is a happy thing that the Greek race came into being, because they
showed the world once at least what is meant by a man. The ideal Greek
virtue [Greek: sophrosune] means, that all parts and faculties of the
man are in proportion, each trained to perfection and all under control
of the will: body, mind, and spirit, each has its due place. Elsewhere
we see one of these in excess. Thus the Indian philosopher soars in the
highest regions of speculation, and sees great truths, but they
intoxicate him: he does not bring them to the test of daily life, nor
does he check them by reason. The Hebrew prophet has his vision of one
God, and in rapt devotion prostrates himself below the dignity of
manhood. The Roman deals with practical politics and material
civilisation; he has a genius for organizing, and for combining the rule
of the best with the freedom and direct influence of all: he, however,
despises the spirit and the imagination. In our own day, what is called
science arrogates almost divine honours to the faculty for measuring and
observing, and neglects both the religious instinct and the
philosopher's theoric; nor is this ideal less deadly than the Roman's to
imagination and the sense of beauty. In modern times also, each person
strives to excel in some one specialty, mental or bodily; and if there
is any feeling at all for proportion it is the proportion of a group,
while the members of the group are [Greek: perittohi], excessive in one
way and defective in the others. But the Greek aimed at perfect
proportion for the man; and his ideal was, that the man's will should
use all the faculties to some worthy end. His body is to be trained by
music and gymnastic: the aim of the first being grace and beauty; of the
second, strength; of the whole, health and joy in all bodily uses. His
mind is to be trained by poetry, oratory, and philosophy; his spirit by
the worship of the gods, in which all that was best in his life is
concentrated into a noble ritual. Such would be the life of the ordinary
Greek; the greater intellects would look beyond the ritual to the
essence; and we have ample evidence to show that their ideals were as
high as any that have been known to other peoples. Aeschylus dealt with
the same problems that baffled the Hebrew prophets, divine justice and
mercy, and the immutable moral law; Plato's speculation took him into
regions where logic and formal philosophy had to be cast aside; Pheidias
by his art added a new dignity to godhead.[1]

Nowhere is the Greek [Greek: sophrosune], their sense of restraint and
proportion, shown better than in their architecture: and this both in
the method of growth and in the final results. The Doric style has grown
out of a wooden building. When and how the first steps were taken, we do
not know, nor whether the Doric be directly descended from the Mycenaean
style, as Perrot and Chipiez will have it. There is this great
difference: that the Mycenaean and Cretan columns are like a Doric column
reversed, the thick end upmost, and they show none of the Greek
refinements to which we shall come later. A simpler origin is possible:
for to-day the traveller may see, in the verandah of some wayside
cottage (Homer's [Greek: a'hithousa herhidoupos]) a primitive Doric
column, some bare tree-trunk with a chunk of itself for capital,
supporting a primitive architrave of the same sort. In the Doric order,
other traces of woodwork are left in the stone, such as the triglyphs,
or beam-ends, with round pegs beneath, or the gouged flutings of the
column itself. And we have direct evidence in the history of the
Olympian Heraeum; where we are told that the columns were once of wood,
and that