Two hundred proofs printed, one hundred
for the artist and one hundred on larger sheets for the frontispiece
of Waldo Peirce's "Unser Kent" (1928, 1930). Two drawings,
one in pencil and the other in pen-and-ink and pencil, are in
the Kent Collection at Columbia University Library. The plate
was destroyed.
Rockwell Kent was born and raised in
Tarrytown, New York. He exhibited an early aptitude for art that
was encouraged by his mother's sister who was an amateur artist.
At the age of thirteen, Kent's aunt took the young boy on a tour
of Europe, during which he was able to experience much important
art and architecture first hand.
A few years later, Kent studied at William
Merritt Chase's summer art school in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island,
and was offered a full scholarship. However, Kent's mother, less
than happy about the idea of her son studying art in New York
City among a group of bohemians, convinced the young man to accept
a four-year scholarship to the School of Architecture at Columbia
University.
Kent studied at Columbia for three and
one-half years before deciding that the fine arts were his true
calling, finally accepting the scholarship to the Chase School.
Kent went on to develop a highly successful
career as not only a painter, printmaker, illustrator, and designer,
but also as a writer, political activist, and spokes person for
artist's causes. Although Kent was clearly recognized as a formidable
artistic talent, his political ideas and activities eventually
overshadowed his other achievements.
In the mid-nineteen thirties, he was
one of the best known of contemporary American painters, and then
he virtually disappeared from most American art surveys until
the 1960s when he again received serious critical attention.
An important aspect of Kent's life,
which directly influenced his artistic production, was his intense
wanderlust. He traveled to such destinations as Monhegan Island
(1905-1910); Newfoundland (1914 -15); Alaska (1918-19); Tierra
Del Fuego (1922) ; France (1925); Ireland (1926-27); and Greenland
on three separate occasions between 1929 and 1935. Each locale
served as subjects for numerous landscape and marine paintings.
