Born in Brampton, Ontario, Caroline Helena Armington first studied art in Toronto. In 1900, she went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian, a private art school that was popular with foreign artists and that accepted women. In 1905, she and her husband, the painter Frank Armington, settled permanently in Paris. A gifted observer and productive printmaker, Caroline Armington achieved commercial success, creating over 500 etchings of Gothic churches, picturesque medieval streets, bridges, and other European architectural monuments.

Typically, Armington’s manner of drawing suggests the lightness and immediacy of a sketch. For example, in Porte d’entrée, Cluny, the image does not quite reach the edges of the plate. Her print reveals the continuing influence of James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), who, with his sketchy etching style, rejected the traditional approach of fully-finished rectangular compositions. Whistler’s manner dominated printmaking well beyond 1911. Caroline Armington’s style remained linked to the late 19th-century and would not evolve in response to more radical developments pioneered by her contemporaries.

In Porte d’entrée, Cluny, Paris, 1911, a flamboyantly arched doorway opens on to the courtyard of the Parisian residence of the abbots of the Benedictine abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, a monastery in eastern France. During the Middle Ages, the abbey of Cluny was the richest and most powerful of French monastic establishments. The Cluny palace in Paris is one of the most important surviving residences of Gothic architecture.

During the 1920s and ’30s, Caroline Armington’s etchings helped spread the enthusiasm for Gothic art. In 1924, a traveling exhibition of both Armingtons’ work came to Des Moines. Local collectors, such as Carl Weeks, the cosmetics magnate who built the Gothic-style Salisbury House mansion in Des Moines, and who was the donor of this print, purchased some of her works. At the time of her exhibition, Armington donated 20 of her etchings to the Des Moines Association of Fine Arts. During the 1940s, the Association transferred its collection to the new Des Moines Art Center.