West Forty-Second Street, Night

In his dramatic nighttime scene West Forty-Second Street, Night, John Taylor Arms captured the dazzling glow of city lights as they accent midtown Manhattan's buildings and other urban features. The artist delineated, at left, the north façade of the New York Public Library building, a major institutional landmark designed by the distinguished architectural firm Carrère and Hastings and completed in 1911, the year before Arms began his career as an architectural draftsman at that firm, before pursuing etching fulltime. Beyond the library, a glowing Chesterfield cigarettes billboard dominates the scene like a giant movie screen. Looming prominently in the left background with its illuminated crown is the gothic revival-style Bush Tower, still located between Sixth Avenue and Broadway but today blocked from view by a modern skyscraper. The artist's image of this stretch of West 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues includes the Sixth Avenue elevated train station, which no longer exists. Several black automobiles on the street are silhouetted at the lower right. In contrast to Martin Lewis's etching Glow of the City (TF 1995.42), which presents the towers of Manhattan in the nighttime distance as seen from a tenement balcony, Arms places the viewer in the midst of midtown's architectural glamour.

West Forty-Second Street, Night is one of fourteen prints of New York City that Arms made during his first decade as an etcher, capitalizing on his previous architectural training and experience. While most of the impressions of this image were printed in color, Arms also printed some in black and white. An accomplished example of color intaglio printmaking, this work also serves as an important record of New York's cityscape in the early 1920s, as different high rise buildings now line the north side of West 42nd Street, on the right side of Arms's view.

Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920 (The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 15, 1999. [exh. cat.]

Paris-New York, aller-retour. Une Modernité américaine en formation, 1875–1940. Oeuvres des collections de la Terra Foundation for the Arts et des Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens (Paris-New York, Roundtrip. American Modernism in the Making, 1875–1940. Works from the Terra Foundation for the Arts and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, September 15–November 30, 2002. [exh. cat.]

Arms, Dorothy Noyes, Marie Probstfield, May Bradshaw Hayes. Descriptive Catalogue of the Work of John Taylor Arms, Manuscript, New York Public Library, no. 124.

Bassham, Ben L., ed. John Taylor Arms: American Etcher. (exh. cat., Elvehjem Art Center). Madison, Wisconsin: Elvehjem Art Center, 1975. No. 124, p. 61. [reprints the Arms/NYPL catalogue]

Fletcher, William Dolan. John Taylor Arms: A Man for All Time; The Artist and his Work. New Haven, Connecticut: Eastern Press, 1982. No. 122, pp. 90–91.