Rockwell Kent
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Rockwell Kent (June 21, 1882 – March 13, 1971) was an American artist, illustrator and author.
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[edit] Biography
Rockwell Kent was born in Tarrytown, New York (but spent the majority of his life in Au Sable Forks), and was well educated in art. He also studied architecture at Columbia University. He was very familiar with building materials and at various times in his life worked as an architectural draftsman and ship's carpenter.
Kent did his first significant work at Monhegan Island, Maine and his work was first shown at the National Academy of Design in 1905. In 1916 he set himself up as a corporation and sold shares to his friends to finance his passage to Alaska, where his oil paintings and drawings established his reputation and made enough money for him to buy out his shareholders. Later he traveled widely, doing other landscape and seascape work in Newfoundland, Alaska, Tierra del Fuego, and Greenland. He also did a great deal of work illustrating working people, serving as an illustrator for The Masses, a popular left-wing magazine.
Approached in 1926 by publisher R. R. Donnelley to produce an illustrated edition of Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, Kent suggested Moby Dick instead. Published in 1930, the deluxe edition sold out immediately; a lower-priced Random House edition became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. A previously obscure book, Moby Dick was rediscovered by critics in the 1920s. The success of the Rockwell Kent illustrated edition was a factor in its becoming recognized as the classic it is today.
Kent was also active in left-wing politics. In 1938 the U.S. Post Office asked him to paint a mural in their headquarters in Washington, DC; Kent included (in Inuit dialect and in tiny letters) an antigovernment statement in the painting, which caused some consternation. In 1939, he joined the Harlem Lodge of the International Workers Order (IWO), a pro-Communist fraternal organization. A lithograph by Kent became the organization's logo in 1940, and, from 1944 to 1953, he served as the organization's President.
As a consequence of his outspoken leftist beliefs, his reputation in the United States declined somewhat in the 1950s and 1960s, and he became a target of McCarthyism. In 1960 Kent donated several hundred paintings and drawings to the Soviet Union, which responded by making him an honorary member of their academy of Fine Arts and awarding him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1967 (Kent donated the prize money to the people of North Vietnam).
When Kent died, The New York Times described him as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States."
[edit] Works
[edit] Written and illustrated by Rockwell Kent
Kent was a prolific writer. His more important works include:
- Voyaging Southwards from the Strait of Magellan — About Kent's travels in Tierra del Fuego.
- Wilderness: A Journey of Quiet Adventure in Alaska — About the year Kent and his young son spent living on Fox Island in Resurrection Bay, Alaska.
- N by E — About Kent's disastrous attempt to sail from New York to Greenland.
- Salamina — About the year Kent spent living and working in Igdlorssuit, Greenland.
- It's Me, O Lord — The Autobiography of Rockwell Kent (1955)
- This is My Own — An autobiographical account of Kent's struggles with the US establishment from the 1930s through to the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s.
[edit] Illustrated by Rockwell Kent
- City Child — poetry by Selma Robinson
- The Mountains Wait — dust jacket only
- Seed — novel by Charles Norris — dust jacket only
- Zest — novel by Charles Norris — dust jacket only
- Candy — novel
- Moby Dick — novel by Herman Melville
- Leaves of Grass — poetry by Walt Whitman
- Erewhon — novel by Samuel Butler
- Candide — novel by Voltaire
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey — novel by Thornton Wilder
- Faust — by Goethe
- Paul Bunyan — novel by Esther Shephard
- Gisli's Saga — Mediaeval Icelandic saga
- Autumn Leaves — social commentary by P W Litchfield
- Canterbury Tales
- The Decameron — novel by Giovanni Boccaccio
- The Complete Works of Shakespeare
[edit] References
- Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002.
- World Authors 1900–1950. The H. W. Wilson Company, 1996.
[edit] Further reading
- Traxel, David, An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent, New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
- Johnson, Fridolf. Rockwell Kent: An Anthology of His Works New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1982.
- Johnson, Fridolf. "The Illustrations of Rockwell Kent: 231 examples from Books, Magazines, and Advertising Art." New York: Dover Publications, 1976
- Roberts, Don. "Rockwell Kent: The Art of the Bookplate." San Francisco: Fair Oaks Press, 2003.
- Priess, David. "Rockwell Kent" American Artist 36, no. 364 (November 1972)
- Jones, Dan Burne. "The Prints of Rockwell Kent: A Catalogue Raisonne." Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1975.
- Arens, Egmont. "Rockwell Kent-Illustrator" The Book Collector's Packet. 1.9 (1932)
