Rockwell Kent:
Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), artist, author, and political activist, had a long and varied
career. During his lifetime, he worked as an architectural draftsman, illustrator,
printmaker, painter, lobsterman, ship's carpenter, and dairy farmer. Born in Tarrytown Heights, New
York, he lived in Maine, Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, the Adirondacks and explored the
waters around Tierra del Fuego in a small boat. Kent's paintings, lithographs, and woodcuts
often portrayed the bleak and rugged aspects of nature; a reflection of his life in harsh
climates.
Kent had an unusually long and thorough training as an artist. He was a student at the
Horace Mann School in New York City and subsequently studied architecture at Columbia
University, toward the end of which he felt a strong inclination toward painting and took up the
study of art under William Merritt Chase at the Shinnecock Hills School. He studied later at
the New York School, under Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller, and finally as an
apprentice to Abbot Thayer at Dublin, New Hampshire. Henri encouraged him to go to
Monhegan Island where Kent painted on his own. He was absorbed in the awesome power
of the environment; nature's timeless energy and contrasting forces influenced his work
throughout his lifetime. His early and lasting relationship with the sea was portrayed again
and again in his work.
The fact that Rockwell Kent never worked in the tradition of the Post-Impressionists had
considerable effect on critical and public response to his work. In the 1920's, he was a rising
young printmaker; and in the 1930's, he reached his greatest popularity. In 1936, the
magazine Prints conducted an extensive and elaborate survey on the practitioners of graphic
art in the United States. Kent came out far ahead of all others as the most widely known and
successful printmaker in the country. Few artists have experienced such fluctuations in the
public esteem of their work as has Kent, from extravagant praise to fanatic
denunciation, usually based on nonaesthetic considerations or on a misunderstanding of the real import of
his prints and paintings. When abstract modern art became better known and accepted in
the 1940s, Kent's popularity suffered a commensurate decline. This fall from grace
compounded when he began to espouse unpopular leftist causes; his work was denounced
for political reasons. Only now do we have the perspective to look at his work with a
receptive and unprejudiced eye.
from: http://www2.plattsburgh.edu/museum/kentkent.htm
more: http://www2.plattsburgh.edu/museum/comid1.htm
(adverts)
pictures: http://www2.plattsburgh.edu/museum/rkcoll.htm
(!!)
mainly interesting (could be an illustration of the
shipwreck in AWAY): http://www2.plattsburgh.edu/museum/rkp2.htm
Title: AND WOMEN MUST WEEP or SHIPWRECK, COAST OF IRELAND, 1927-28,
more art links & pictures: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/kent_rockwell.html
