Title: Basilica of the Madeleine, Vezelay.
John Taylor Arms (1887-1953)
Medium: Etching, 1929.
Edition 130.
Signed and dated in pencil, inscribed "Third State." French Church Series #28.
Image size 12 3/4 x 7 3/8" (32.4 x 18.8 cm).
Condition: Good condition, save for faint mat line, printed on antique paper watermarked 1818.

John Taylor Arms (1887-1953) John Taylor Arms was born in Washington, D.C., on April 19, 1887. He began his higher education as a law student at Princeton University in 1905 but transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1907 to study architecture. He apprenticed as an architectural draftsman before opening an architectural firm with Cameron Clark as a partner in 1914. In 1913 he married Dorothy Noyes and as a Christmas present that year, she gave him an etching kit. At first, he took up etching as a hobby, mastering the technique by copying European masters. He published his first print, Sunlight and Shadow, in 1915. During WWI he served in the Navy and in 1919 decided to give up his career as an architect and dedicated himself to art, primarily etching, for the remainder of his life.

Arms was one of the more famous printmakers of the first half of the twentieth-century. He is well known for his medieval architectural etchings and precise realism. From his prints one can see his belief that Gothic architecture was man's greatest achievement. Throughout his career he produced over four hundred prints, wrote and illustrated numerous books, on both travel and printmaking, including Churches of France; Hill Towns and Cities of Northern Italy; Design in Flower Arrangement; and a Handbook on Printmaking and Printmakers.

As a printmaker he was mostly self-taught. Although self-taught his expertise as an etcher was without equal. He would often hone down photograph needles to create lines that need high powered magnification to see. The effect is to give the gothic architecture a texture and a feeling of life that few others could achieve.