A fine atmospheric impression, with substantial plate tone, carefully wiped to highlight the glass windows of the church and the courtyard in the foreground; the building at the right, for example, has been covered with a delicate veil of plate tone.

The composition was essentially complete in the first state; in the second state Marin added some work on the chimney and building on the right.

The success of this composition apparently led the Gazette des Beaux Arts to commission Marin to create another print of the same subject for a large unsigned edition pulled from a steel faced plate; the Gazette print (Zigrosser 76) is an entirely new version, not to be confused with the small edition of fine hand pulled, carefully wiped, and pencil signed impressions as represented by our print.

John Marin (1870-1953) etching St. Pauls Against the El, 1930, signed in pencil, from the edition of only about 20 (Zigrosser 146). [also signed and dated in the plate] . In very good condition, with margins (tiny skinned spots upper corners, a fox mark upper margin verso, archival mounting, 9 5/8 x 6 7/8 inches.

A fine, fresh impression with considerable plate tone, giving an unusual atmospheric quality to this cubist/modernist image. Published by Alfred Stieglitz.

St. Paul’s church and the surrounding downtown structures were favorite Marin etching subjects: he made several Whistlerian-style etchings of St. Paul’s around 1914, and returned to the subject in the mid-Twenties, but now in a modernist idiom. St. Paul’s Against the El represents an ambitious culmination of these efforts, and is surely one of his most successful modernist etchings.