Art: Will

Last week the will of the late Joseph Pennell, etcher, was made public. Mr. Pennell stipulated that upon the death of his wife Elizabeth* everything he owned — capital, manuscripts, books, paintings, patents — should become the property of the U. S. government. The capital, probably amounting to $250,000, shall be known as the

Pennell Fund and used for three purposes:

To form a collection of the etchings and documents of himself and Mrs. Pennell to be known as the “J. and E. R. Pennell Collections.”

To buy additions to his own already notable collection of the etchings and documents of James Whistler.

To form a government “Calcographic Museum.” By this provision (intricately framed) the U. S. will buy the original etching plates and lithographic stones of celebrated artists and make prints of them to be sold at nominal prices.

There are now only three such museums in the world: Louis XIV founded the Chalcographie du Louvre to preserve in etchings the military and festal splendors of his reign; the Regia Calcografia, founded in Rome by Pope Clement XII, contains 15,000 plates; at the Calcografia Nacional, in Madrid, you can buy a Goya* print for a peseta.

*Elizabeth Robins Pennell was a Phila delphia girl, born in 1855. Educated in a Paris convent and at Eden Hall (Torresdale, Pa.), she married Joseph Pennell in her 30th year. She is the author of a life of Mary Wollstonecraft and (with her hus band) of a life of Painter Whistler.

*Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), famed Spanish court painter, who lived a life about as regular as that of Benvenuto Cellini. He served for a time with a “quadrilla” of bullfighters and much of his work savors of the bull ring. In recent years he has been much venerated for his bold technique. The plates of Goya’s etchings are owned by the Spanish Government, and while the impressions made in Goya’s time are rare and expensive, modern prints from the old and worn plates are struck off in cheap profusion.