Gatun Lock, Panama Canal

Joseph Pennell
The Guard Gate [Gatun Lock]
Lithograph, 1912
Prints & Photographs Division
Bequest of Joseph Pennell,
ca. 1937 (58A.1a)

The Guard Gate at Gatun Lock is one of a series of lithographs made in 1912 during the construction of the Panama Canal by American printmaker Joseph Pennell. The artist commented at the time: "I have never seen such a magnificent arrangement of line, light, and mass, and yet those were the last things the engineers though of. But great work is great art . . . . This is the Wonder of Work." This print is from the nearly complete collection of his work that the artist bequeathed to the Library of Congress.