APRIL 19, 2019 - PT. 1: WHERE IS ROCKWELL KENT & WHAT'S HE DOING?

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

April 19, 2019 --

ABOVE -- Dall's Porpoise splash along (rooster tailing) beside Bear Glacier in Resurrection Bay. Photo by Jim Pfeiffenberger.

Kent and Rockie are back in New York by now. In the Archives of American Art online collection of Kent letters, we now have little to go on regarding happenings. There is no need for Rockwell and Kathleen to have a lengthy correspondence. They are together again. The next letter I find from Kent to his wife is dated September 30, 1919. There may be more somewhere, and others to friends and associates. In his 1955 autobiography Rockwell writers, “Of course our homecoming was a joyous one: we loved the family even more than we loved God. Nor was it the less joyous in that I saw ourselves as rescuers: we were to lead them out of Egypt and into the land of Canaan, onto the land where the grass would be in place of pavements, and trees in place of city blocks; where the open sky by day would be clear blue and stars would shine at night; and where the snow in winter would be white.”  Kent sees himself as the savior, leading his family of captives out of their slavery in the city. In the letters we have seen that he asks Kathleen to be his savior. In one his last letters to her on March 6th he had written: Put fences of thorns all about me and I’ll help you in building them; take me into the wilderness and hide me from temptations and, even if I don’t like it for its own sake, I’d go for yours; but above all please please mother darling try to be to me that compliment that my wild and unstable nature, rightly or wrongly, requires,- and these thorns and wilderness can be or not be -- our happiness will be secure. No – I know that your happiness too must be achieved; but we assume now, don’t we darling, that when we’re both true and loving to each other we’ll both be so happy that nothing else will matter a bit?

Throughout this website, I’ve emphasized that 36-year-old Rockwell Kent on Fox Island has doubts about his career and the success of his Alaska venture. Newfoundland is still fresh in his mind. He and Kathleen sacrifice much to settle there in 1914. Rockwell’s intention is for this to be a long-term move. Back when his first extra-marital love, Jennie Bell Sterling, got pregnant, Rockwell set up a trust with an inherence he had hoped to use to establish an art school. Baby Carl died a few months later, and Jennie married a doctor not long after. For various reasons the case goes to court and Kent gets involved. The trust had been set up for the baby, and now that Jennie is supported, he wants the money and property back. But now in 1914 he needs money. They sell many of their possessions, some of Kathleen’s treasured belongings, and they settle in at Brigus. A year after their ejection from Newfoundland in 1916, Kent meets Hildegarde. The court case involving Jennie is barely over. 

BELOW -- An article mentioning Kent in Oct. 11, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

The years between 1915 and July 1918 when he left for Alaska were difficult ones.  Kent’s third wife, Sally, wrote a Preface to The Baxter Society Facsimile Edition (1990) of the The Jewel: A Romance of Fairyland, a handmade book the artist created for Hildegarde in 1917. Sally wrote: “In 1916 while he was in his mid-thirties, he espoused the philosophy that an artist’s life should not be constrained by conventional mores; by 1955 when he wrote his autobiography, I think he had come to reflect on such affairs as transgressions…The period of The Jewel was a difficult time for Rockwell and his first wife and family. He was a mature man, recognized in New York as a promising painter but unable to earn much of a living. To save money, his family stayed at various places away from New York City, and he lived alone, working most of the time in an architectural firm {Ewing and Chappell} and selling drawings to magazines.”

BELOW -- Young Rockwell Kent. Photo from the Rockwell Kent Gallery, Plattsburgh State University, New York.

According to David Traxel in his biography An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent (1980), Kent’s interest in art began early and those who knew soon recognized his talent. After graduating from the Horace Mann School, Kent began studying architecture at Columbia University. He soon won a Benefactor Scholarship and later became a Vanderbilt scholar. He did have financial need, but these awards were for achievement. Kent’s artistic talent was recognized early within the New York art world. In his late teens he studied under realist artist William Meritt Chase at his Shinnecock summer school. In 1901 Chase awarded Kent the class prize, and the next year he won a scholarship to the New York School of Art (The Chase School). His architectural study at Columbia had been a compromise with his family. His love was painting. During his junior year, while viewing paintings at the annual exhibit of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, young Kent decided he could paint better than that. He used his art scholarship to take night classes from artist and teacher Robert Henri, and continued to take humanities classes at Columbia. But he couldn’t live in both worlds, and in the fall of 1902 at age 20, he enrolled full time in the New York School of Art. Henri had tremendous influence on Kent, as did Abbott H. Thayer, whose apprentice he became in the summer of 1902. Thayer would bring a painting to a certain point and stop. His apprentice would then copy it, and Thayer would work on the copy so as not to ruin the original. Recognizing Kent’s talent, he told the young man to go off and just paint and not waste his time copying. On June 23, 1902, Thayer’s wife wrote to Kent’s mother, Sara – “Mr. Thayer says that Rockwell has big gift and will surely be a prominent artist.” Kent became good friends with Thayer’s son, Gerald, and later met his cousin, young Kathleen Whiting. At age 17, she married 26-year-old Rockwell on New Year’s Eve 1908. 

By the time Kent comes to Alaska in late July 1918, he’s frustrated and angry. He’s not only trying to escape a twisted love triangle, but at age 36 he’s reached perhaps the half-way point of his life. This may be his last best chance move from a "promising young artist" into the role of an established and financially secure one. It’s one thing to be completely ignored by the art world. That’s bad enough. But Kent hasn’t been disregarded all these years. He’s had his successes and been lauded as an up and comer. But praise can’t pay the rent or buy groceries. He still can’t sell enough of his work to earn a living. That’s why he worked at Robert Henri’s Monhegan Island art school, and later attempted to start art school of his own in Newfoundland. Fortunately, he has many talents and often works at the architectural firm Ewing and Chappell to support his family. The Chappell in the firms name is his close friend, George Chappell. 

Years earlier as a gift, Kent gave one of his paintings, Winter, to his teacher, Robert Henri. About 1914, Marie Sterner of Knoedler and Company borrowed it for a show and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which usually snubbed modern art, purchased it. In his generosity, Henri gave the sale money to his former student. In frustration Kent probably wondered, why is an artist represented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art unable to sell enough of his work to actually paint for a living? He wasn’t uneducated in the history of art. His family had warned him and he knew about the odds of financial success in such a risky career. On the other hand, his competitive nature was unforgiving. He had to believe in his genius. He deserved recognition and success and would achieve it doing whatever he had to do. But deep down he had his doubts. He could share with few people his true fears and anxieties – the anger and angst we find in the letters from Fox Island to his wife.

As Zigrosser suggests, and Chappell knew – if you challenged Kent’s beliefs too rigorously you’d either lose him or gain his respect. It could be a dangerous confrontation. But his mother could give his arrogance right back to him with the kind of cruelty Kent sometimes practiced. As David Traxel relates in his biography of Kent, during his Monhegan Island years, around the time he met and married Kathleen, the artist was a militant vegetarian. When he would visit his mother and siblings and they sat down to dinner, Kent might say “Would you like more corpse?  Pass the carrion to Dorothy” {his sister}. Traxel writes: “It was, perhaps, at one of these family dinners that Kent’s mother, referring to his stingy-chinned profile, made the cruel observation that he looked like a duck about to quack.”

Perhaps Kent is more willing to empty himself and share his fears, doubts, anxieties with Kathleen while he’s on Fox Island because his wife, like his mother, is willing to stand up to him. She’s presented him with an ultimatum – it’s either me or Hildegarde. I’m not going to take your infidelities anymore. Kathleen doesn’t back down, even through the letters she sends out in March. She wants to reconcile their marriage, but not on his terms alone. We have a lot to talk about when you get back home, she tells him. Kent respects the strength he begins to see in her now, and realizes she’s changed and he must as well.

Kent has had a significant amount of press up to his Alaska trip – not all of it positive nor only about his art. His ouster from Newfoundland was widely covered. He is not unknown, nor unappreciated in New York City’s art community. On January 6, 1918, while Kent is planning his Alaska trip, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published an article by Helen Appleton Read, focusing mostly on artist Arthur B. Davies. In a section about an exhibition at Knoedlers which she calls diverse and hit and miss, she writes: Rockwell Kent’s group of wood-prints (or are they pen-and-ink drawings in the manner of wood-prints?) are a distinct surprise to those who have thought of him as a painter. However, his characteristic manner is carried out in his black-and-white expression.” Perhaps comments like this encourage him on Fox Island as he felt forced to work on the black and white pen-and-inks because the weather and winter darkness didn’t give him enough light to paint with colors. Note also the confusion about whether the works are wood-prints or pen and inks. Even today, some people think the drawings in Wilderness are wood-blocks – a skill Zigrosser encouraged him to pursue in Alaska. Zigrosser sent Kent the materials to work with.

A few months later, on April 14, 1918, as Kent’s departure for Alaska gets closer, Henry McBride in the New York Herald includes one of Kent’s pen-and-inks from the Seven Ages of Man in his three-page review of the current art scene. SEE BELOW:

On April 28^th – even though the Brooklyn Daily Eagle printed three of the four images from his Seven Ages of Man at the Daniel Gallery – Kent was probably upset. They identified him as Rockwell Kurts. 

The reviewer, however, did get his name correct in the article text: At these galleries are also being shown Rockwell Kent’s tragic and beautiful “Seven Ages of Man.” In this case the seven ages are only four and the last picture shows the young man dead on the battlefield. This simple statement, granting of course the beauty of the conception and treatment, is more likely to drive home the grim truths of war than any quantity of atrocity pictures or sensational literature.” They also printed Robert Henri’s Image in the Willow Tree on exhibit at the Montross Gallery.

While Kent and Rockie are trying to keep dry on Fox on Oct. 13, 1919, the Oakland Tribune publishes reviews by Laura Bride Powers. See below. 

In another review on Oct. 27th, she writes: A fortnight ago we were concerned with Rockwell Kent of New York, the esoteric painter who is very much in the public eye – a subjective creator who has much to say about the soul and its flights – or descents – and about social problems that reflect the workings of the spirit side of men and women.” Powers goes on to discuss John Sloan and quotes Guy Pene du Boes regarding Sloan in an Evening Post Magazine article: “The man is determined to be isolated so that the cost of isolation will never be extravagant. Perhaps he does not contradict his own opinions willfully, but he contradicts all others and must sometimes contradict his own, so sweeping is the negation he makes. Yet he is not a pessimist. His love of life throws him into the recording of it with remarkable zest. Sometimes I think of him as a short-sighted humanitarian, a humanitarian for the present like Rockwell Kent or Mahonri Young. These look no further than the suffering at hand. Kent never walks on flowers himself and is likely to be rather rough with those who do.

On Nov. 20, 1918, Royal Cortissoz of the New York Tribune reviewed the so-called modernists at the Daniel Gallery who give a somewhat thin, weedy account of themselves thus far this season. Cortissoz adds: Mr. Rockwell Kent’s big winter scene, with figures silhouetted like snapshots against the snow, is as amusing in style as it is truthful in substance. All these painters feel their way toward something sensuous and fine. The modernist group preoccupied with queer theories and clumsy methods, is chiefly remarkable for the dull mediocrity of its paintings. It aims, possibly, at the truth. It evidently regards with indifference, if it is not inimical to, the loveliness in nature and art. And in throwing tradition overboard it makes jettison of technique.

Word had most likely spread during the fall and winter of 1918 among some in the New York art world that Kent was in Alaska  -- though I find no newspaper articles mentioning it. Soon the artist sends some of his pen and inks to Kathleen, Zigrosser and Chappell – and they start showing them around. The illustrated journal is shared among friends and family. When the Chart of Resurrection Bay arrives in New York and copies are made and distributed, word of his Alaska venture probably expands. What kind of art will he bring back from Alaska, many may wonder? What they’ve seen is encouraging. Will it be more like the Newfoundland work or different? There was probably some anticipation as we see his name mentioned more through February and March 1919 before his return.

TO BE CONTINUED