Arts and Letters

It has been said of Ingres that his art had the undeviating continuity of a straight line. This could be said, with equal truth, of the art of John Taylor Arms. His dedication, his consecration to his art, to his subject matter, to his technique was absolute. He spent his life visiting his motives, making his prints and furthering the cause of his beloved art in every possible way. He not only made etchings, but he lectured on etchings, etchers, and etching. He gave demonstrations of the making of a plate and the printing of it. He wrote a book on etching. From the very beginning, Arms's conception and practice of print-making underwent almost no change; with a few excursions into other subject matter—the battleships, a few landscapes, and the color aquatints of sailing ships—he remained faithful to architecture.

In the National Academy of Design he instituted a gallery devoted exclusively to prints. This he decorated, organized, and supervised. Later, he caused the National Academy of Design to create a Department of Graphic Arts.

From its beginning, the Society of Brooklyn Etchers was largely his creation. He was its President and moving spirit. This is also true of the New York Society of Etchers, of which he was President until he resigned, only to be called back to the office after it became the Society of Graphic Arts.

He was not only devoted to the practice of his art, but was a devoted admirer of it through the ages. He was a great collector. His colander boxes bulged with examples of the old masters and with the work of his contemporaries. His taste was almost omnivorous. Two artists, so different in their practice from his own as Eugene Higgins and John Sloan, were among his favorites.

Arms's drawings, though not so famous as his etchings, were of the same high competence; drawn with a hard pencil, they haven't the carrying power of the etchings, but are more like silver points and are best seen when held in the hand and viewed up close.

Mention must be made of John Arms's ability as a prose writer. He was a master of a strong, vigorous style which stood him in good stead as spoken word, in his lectures and demonstrations, and as printed text.

From the foregoing, it might be thought that John Arms was a work-enslaved grind, but nothing could be farther from the truth. He had his moments of relaxation. No one was better company. Then there was his other passion—fishing. He went to Canada, before the frost was out of the ground, for the salmon fishing, and to Vermont for the trout. From all reports, his skill as a fly-fisher was of the same high quality as his etchings and writing.

In any estimate of the life and work of John Taylor Arms, tribute must be paid to that noble woman, his wife, Dorothy Noyes. His life had its tragedies, all lives have, but for forty years John Arms had the companionship, sustaining help, and sympathetic understanding of as fine a woman as ever accompanied a man through the years. In Dorothy Arms, John Taylor Arms was greatly blessed.

John Taylor Arms's life was preëminently a successful one. He succeeded in what he most wanted to do and did it all his life with all his might.

Good-by old friend.