July 30-31, 2018
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 “Later in the century, painters of talent and vision would go north to stay. If many of them produced larger bodies of northern work than Kent, and in the end had a greater impact on the image of Alaska, none captured the spirit of the northern landscape with greater passion and clarity than Rockwell Kent.” Kesler E. Woodward in Painting the North: Alaskan Art in the Anchorage Museum of History and Art (1993) As we travel back 100 years ago today, Rockwell Kent and his eight-year-old son, Rocky, are also traveling – west -- riding a Canadian Pacific Railway train on their way to Alaska. “I was probably not overly excited,” Rocky remembered about the five-day trip. Moving from place to place was just part of life in the Kent family. He had little knowledge of Alaska, and there would be no school to miss. Kent believed, travel and home schooling was the best education for his children. Kent had be...