Accession Number
2009/1.478

Title
Street in Porto Maurizio

Artist(s)
John Taylor Arms

Artist Nationality
American (North American)

Object Creation Date
1928

Medium & Support
etching on paper

Dimensions
19 3/4 in x 14 5/8 in x 11/16 in (50.2 cm x 37.2 cm x 1.8 cm);9 7/16 in x 4 3/16 in (24 cm x 10.7 cm)

Credit Line
Gift of Clan Crawford, Jr.

Subject matter
Porto Maurizio is a town on the Mediterranean coast between Nice and Genoa, and is part of Italy’s Liguria region—in 1923, Mussolini merged Porto Maurizio with surrounding communes to create the city of Imperia.
Porto Maurizio is well-known for the old, picturesque narrow lanes, called carrugi, that Arms depicts here. Such subject matter, and Arms' poetic treatment of it, reveal the influence of the nineteenth century European "Etching Revival" and aesthetic movements, and in particular the work of the American ex-patriot James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). Unlike Whistler, Arms continued to live and work mostly in America, and also depicted American subjects in a manner that paralleled the picturesque treatment previously reserved for European subjects such as this one.  

Physical Description
In this strongly vertical composition, a tall archway frames a view of the chatoic maze of further arches, roofs, walls and windows along a small, winding side street. The artist selectively describes various material details, such as the stones and bricks of the walls, and the sagging tile roofs. All elements in the image seem to register the effects of time.
The title “STREET IN PORTO MAURIZIO” is etched by hand in the plate just below the lower left edge of the composition.

Primary Object Classification
Print

Primary Object Type
intaglio print

Collection Area
Western

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
Picturesque, the
arches
brick (clay product)
buttresses
cities
etchings (prints)
lanes (roads)
roofs
stone (worked rock)
streets
townscapes (built environment)