PART 2 JULY 9 - 12: CARL RUGGLES AND ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

Part 2 - Carl Ruggles & Rockwell Kent

July 9-12, 2019

ABOVE – On March 6, 1969, Kent sent this caricature he drew of Carl Ruggles under the pen name of Hogarth, Jr. to John Kirkpatrick to be copied. It’s dated May 1922 on the back. Kirkpatrick was documenting Ruggles’ correspondence and life and asked Kent for help. Kent wrote: Since you were here, I have by chance run across a reproduction of a tiny drawing of Carl that appeared in “Vanity Fair countless many years ago. It being, as I assure it is, the “spitting image” of Carl at that time, it should dismiss from you any thought that my Captain Ahab was to any degree whatever inspired by Carl. Some had speculated that Kent used Ruggles as his model for Ahab in his famous illustrations for Moby Dick. Kirkpatrick returned the drawing with a copy and in an undated letter and wrote: It is indeed a most amusing caricature of Carl. But you make me think of his Angels – such a perfect realization -- it seems to suggest that by 1921 his ideas may not have been too big for him.

       BELOW – A caricature Kent drew of himself (signed H. jr.) that appeared in Oct. 25, 1924, perhaps in the Literary Review section of a newspaper or magazine reviewing his new book, Voyaging Southward from the Strait of Magellan (1924). Rockwell Kent Collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

It’s the fall of 1919 at “Egypt” in Vermont, Rockwell Kent has finished Wilderness and the manuscript has been sent off to his publisher, Putnam’s. Now he needs to finish the paintings he began in Alaska and prepare them for a New York show in early 1920. Lars Olson, his Fox Island companion, may have been writing to Kent between the artist’s return in April and early September. If so, I haven’t found those letters. Kent does write to Olson on Sept. 2 and Olson writes back on Sept. 22. {See Link One and Link Two to read these entries}

BELOW – What looks to be a draft of the introduction to Wilderness written in Vermont. Kent is using the illustrated journals he sent to Kathleen as a model. Rockwell Kent Collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The old Swede is leaving Fox Island, tearing down the buildings, saving some lumber, trying to decide whether to abandon the territory. The fox farm enterprise on the island has ended. It had its success, but the venture peaked too early – the Alaska fur industry would boom in the 1920’s. Kent is trying to get Olson to join him in Vermont. Olson has misgivings but considers it. Kent is still working on the farm buildings at “Egypt.” He writes to one of his good friends, composer Carl Russell (and his wife Charlotte), whom he met while in Winona, Minnesota in 1913. Their correspondence begins soon after they meet. {See Part 1 of this series}

BELOW – Carl and Charlotte Ruggles

In Oct. 1913, not long after Kent leaves Winona, Minnesota, Ruggles writes a letter to Kent ends with, With the loftiest admiration for you and your work, I remain, Yours in exile. On Dec. 1st the composer again writes: Dear old fellow – I want you to know that I believe that you and {Arthur} Davies are the best in the whole country.

BELOW – Arthur Davies in 1907. Wikipedia photo.

And again, on Dec. 20^th, What I admire so intensely about all your work is its absolute freedom from conventions. You certainly sail uncharted seas. To hell with those who piddle around creeks, say I. The word freedom, I think, expresses the basic quality of your work. I feel it surging through everything I have seen.

Ruggles believes they have much in common. He esteems Kent’s originality, for the composer is also an innovator. As Joan G. Schroeter writes in “The Ruggles-Kent Correspondence: ‘Doing the Same Thing’” -- Carl Ruggles’ music is regarded by musicians as one of America’s most daringly creative modern composers. His music with its total polyphone and intensely chromatic melodies, however, strains the resources of most symphony orchestras and taxes the comprehension of the average concertgoer. In 1912 he began to compose an opera while teaching music and conducting Winona’s symphony orchestra. As he continued to work on it, he sent excerpts to Kent, and explained their function. Although there was some discussion of Kent’s designing scenery for the opera, the work was never completed.{The Kent Collector Spring 2000}. Ruggles encourages Kent’s venture to Newfoundland and writes on June 18, 1914, I am expecting wonderful things of you because you have everything… The next year, on Sept. 15^th, he adds, The more I work, and the more I see in other people’s work, convinces me that you are true and noble like Beethoven.”

In 1913, Kent sends Ruggles his painting, The Seiners, with the agreement that the musician will pay for it as he can.

BELOW – The Seiners by Rockwell Kent (1907)

Ruggles cherishes that painting – On Dec. 20^th he writes: It is a glory. Every time we look at it we discover something new to marvel at. He promised to send money from time to time. That same month he writes, It is a great piece of work; one of the finest seascapes I have ever seen. I love the mystery in the foreground. Indeed, there can be no art without the element of mystery, I think. By March 1914, while Kent is struggling financially with his family in Newfoundland, he asks Ruggles for a final payment. The composer agrees to send it back if asked, but pleads with Kent to let him keep it, asking forgiveness, and promising to send $10 a month until he pays it off. In Aug. 1914 Russell compares Kent’s work with Winslow Homer’s. The sea, I think, can never again be painted in the old way. There is but little mystery in Homer’s work. I think there should be figures somewhere, don’t you? I write you because I am all the more confirmed in my belief in you. Ruggles has trouble with even the $10 a month payment. On Oct. 21, 1915 he writes to Kent, I am hard up just at this time, but will send you some money the minute I can spare it: forgive me for being pour. I wish I had a thousand to send you, and even that would not begin to pay for the joy your picture has given us. Kent desperately needs money by 1918 when he was planning his Alaska trip and reclaims The Seiners. Reluctantly, but understanding, Ruggles returns it. The Seiners sells to Henry Clay Frick for $1500.

Kent recalls this story in a Dec. 21,1966 letter to John Kirkpatrick (1905-1991).

 Incidentally, Kent writes, among the postcards that I sent you is a reproduction of a painting of mine called The Seiners. That was in Carl’s possession for some time. Returned to me, it was bought by Henry Frick. Inherited with the Frick Collection by his daughter, Helen, she spoke of it, as I am told, as a “disgrace” to the Collection and eventually disposed of it. It is now in the possession of Joseph Hirshhorn and will be shown with the exhibit of my work in New York in November. In her article Schroeter adds: In 1966 when the Hirshhorn Museum was founded in Washington, D.C. as part of the Smithsonian, Kent’s The Seiners became a part of the museum’s permanent collection, a gift of the Hirshhorn Foundation. Kent’s correspondence with Kirkpatrick can be found in the Rockwell Kent Collection at the Archives of American art within the Carl Ruggles folder. Kirkpatrick is seeking letters and other ephemera from Kent related to his relationship with Ruggles. In these letters we learn about events at Arlington during the years immediately after Kent’s return from Alaska. I’ll cover the contents of these letters in the next entry – but for now:

On July 22, 1966, Kirkpatrick writes to Kent on letterhead from the music department of Cornell University. Now 90 years old, Ruggles has asked Kirkpatrick to be his musical executor at his death, and Kirkpatrick begins the process of collecting and organizing the composer’s papers. He has known Ruggles since 1935 but has never met Kent. Carl has remained deeply grateful for all that your friendship meant to him, Kirkpatrick writes, particularly the way you often championed this cause (as he told me – the way Cellini fought fights for Michelangelo.) Kirkpatrick finds about thirty letters from Rockwell to Ruggles from 1917 on, and now wonders whether Kent has any of Carl’s letters to him. Just now Carl is quite ill, Kirkpatrick writes. The week before Ruggles began hemorrhaging and was rushed to the Benningthon hospital. He is being fed intravenously, and the bleeding has stopped – but there is no diagnosis. Kirkpatrick has visited Ruggles recently and he is doing much better.

BELOW – John Kirkpatrick, Wikipedia photo.

As Kent works diligently on his Alaska paintings in Nov. 1919, he writes to Ruggles: When I’m not painting the very thought of it is bitter to me – I don’t know whether I’m a genius or a failure – I guess I don’t care. The land and seascapes he recently finished possess a freshness and veracity that give them distinction and show me, however, to be still young. Nearing 40-years-old on Fox Island, Kent had been concerned with his aging. How long would it take him to gain artistic success? Would he ever be able to earn a living with his art? He had written of this to Kathleen. Reading William Blake, and positioned within his personal island paradise at mid-age between the innocence of his nine-year-old son, Rockie, and the experience of seventy-one-year-old Lars Olson – Kent observed another benefit of wilderness, and wrote of it in his book: The still deep cup of the wilderness is potent with wisdom. Only to have tasted it is to have moved a lifetime forward to a finer youth. His wildness, his daemon, helped keep him young.

Admiration like he got from Ruggles nourished Kent. He not only thrived on it, his psyche demanded it, as we see from his Fox Island letters to Kathleen. Kent responded in kind, for Ruggles also struggled for recognition. His opera, Sunken Bell (based on the play by Gerhart Hauptmann) suffered not only from his slow pace, but also because of the anti-German sentiment during World War I. It remained unfinished when Kent wrote to him from “Egypt” on Jan. 1, 1920: Carl, for heaven’s sake, begin the new great work again. You’re one of the few great men I’ve ever met or seen. And again on April 8^th, Do a thousand things – pile up those beautiful manuscripts of yours; - what if they don’t get played yet. They will and then you’ll laugh to think of the great pile of treasure you have.

In that Aug. 8, 1919 letter, Kent writes: …I’ve been very busy on my forthcoming book. My book is coming out in a most magnificent edition, two editions in fact, - one is limited and the other popular. Popular for whom! Superman is in paint. It is one of the pictures I carried farthest in Alaska.

BELOW – Superman, one of the pen and inks in Wilderness.

Kent continues that Aug. 8, 1919 letter: When we’re settled in our own house you must come and visit us and talk with me about our art. Just now we’re living in a corner of someone else’s house not tremendously comfortable {Probably with Dorothy Canfield Fisher}. My estate is really magnificent. Two hundred acres! I’m already working in the cow-barn, converted into a workshop. But no painting as yet. His host, Mrs. Fisher, organized a show of farmer-actors to do a show in Manchester, and Kent is expected to do few songs. He asks Ruggles to set the few short lines of the chorus of these songs into four-part harmony. That will only be a few minutes work for you, won’t it? I am sending you the book with the songs marked. If you will do it soon, please, for we have to learn the damned things.

Ruggles came through and the music reached Kent three days later. It sounds great, Kent wrote back on Aug. 12^th, and you have made it simple enough for our rustic talent to master. Rockwell informs his friend of Mrs. Fisher’s very fine and appreciative introduction to his book -- but seems miffed that the publisher sees Fisher’s connection as the attention-getter. I don’t think my own part of it is viewed very appreciatively. Wilderness was Kent’s first book, and he didn’t have the control over it that he would later insist upon for later books. I have had to cut out some of my reflections on the war, he tells Ruggles, but as they were not at all essential to the book I put up no protest. I’d have liked, however, to have put into print my contempt of the outrageous patriotic frameup. Kent finally restored much of those cuts in the special 1970 edition published by Wesleyan University Press with my foreword.

During these years, the two men occasionally collaborated on various projects. In 1919, Ruggles dedicated a poem to his son, Micha, set it to music, and asked Kent to create a drawing for it. In Nov. 1919 Kent writes back: Of course, I’ll do the designs, if you let me not to say definitely just when. I’ll do them first chance I get and be might proud to. By Dec. 7, Kent had selected a title – I like ‘Toys’ best. Sounds like a ‘best seller.’ He sent the drawings along. When Ruggles received he wrote back to Kent asking him to sign them. Kent responds on May 18, 1920: What in the world do you think I care so much about a signature for. I’m continually being pestered by owners of my paintings, who suddenly discover that the thing is not signed!! What magic is there in a signature I don’t know. Anybody that knows anything knows who did a thing – and what if they don’t. If you think my name should be on that drawing, put it type or lettering (your own lettering will do) ‘Designed by Rockwell Kent, 1920.’ {Very small handwriting} That size.

BELOW -- The May 18, 1920 postcard quoted above that Kent sent to Ruggles. Rockwell Kent Collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

TOYS by Carl Ruggles

Come here, little son,

        and I will play with you.

See, I have bought you

        lovely toys,

Painted ships,

And trains of choo-choo cars,

And a wonderful balloon that

        floats, and floats, and

        floats,

Way up to the stars.

TO BE CONTINUED

Part 3: Rockwell Kent & Carl Ruggles, Conclusion