Sunset from Williamsburg Bridge

The compositional grace and delicate tonalities of Pennell's etching allude to the familiar conventions of Impressionism, although the subject of the city and the bustling river was undeniably modern. Pennell extolled the structures of the new urban landscape: "The mills and docks and canals and bridges of the present are more mighty, more practical than any similar works of the past; they are the true temples of the present."