Venetian Mirror 1935

This is John Taylor Arms’s, Venetian Mirror, an etching. It's a delicate dance of lines, all these tiny, precise marks that build up to form a cityscape, reflected in water. It's like he's trying to capture the light itself, the way it shimmers and bounces off the water. Look at the reflections of the buildings. They're not perfect mirror images, but softened, distorted, like a memory. And the way he uses the negative space, the white of the paper, to suggest the sparkle on the water's surface, it’s gorgeous. I wonder if he was looking at Whistler, who also made a lot of etchings of Venice? Both artists were exploring the atmospheric effects of light and water, but where Whistler is all about suggestion and atmosphere, Arms is all about detail and precision. Ultimately, it’s a reminder that art is always an ongoing dialogue, each artist building on what came before, and finding their own way to see the world.