JULY 27 - AUG. 2, 2019 PART 2: WILDERNESS AND THE ALASKA PAINTINGS

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

Part 2 – Wilderness & the Alaska Paintings: 1920

July 27-Aug. 2, 2019

ABOVE – The house at “Egypt.” Photo from a private Kent family album.

I live not in myself, but I become/Portion of that around me; and to me/High mountains are a feeling, but the hum/Of human cities torture.

         Lord Byron in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.”

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. 

         Rockwell Kent to Carl Ruggles, Nov. 1919.

Before I write about the opening of Rockwell Kent’s Alaska paintings exhibition with the publication of Wilderness -- and the reviews – I want to cover some of the correspondence I’ve found about his preparation for those events. I’ve quoted some of this earlier, but here I want to put the material in chronological order.

On Fox Island, Kent spends at least a month preparing a secure and comfortable place for him and Rockie for the winter. This preparation includes several trips to and from Seward with supplies, repairing the cabin, clearing the area to create more light, putting in a large south-facing window, and cutting several cords of firewood to keep his two stoves going when the weather gets worse. He’s been on the island a month before he begins to paint. We see Kent doing the same at “Egypt” – this time for Kathleen and his children. As he has promised his wife in the letters from Alaska, this new home will be a special place far away from the city where they will live peacefully and simply. I point this out to emphasize the ideal discipline of a Victorian-raised gentleman. I say “ideal” because Kent was an idealist and this suspension of his painting couldn’t have been easy for him. But it was necessary and he forced himself to delay his life’s work until he finished the chores that needed to be done. Today we might call it “delayed-gratification” – a virtue and ideal much more stressed in Victorian times. Chapter I of David Traxel’s biography of Kent (“The Early Years”) gives an excellent account of Kent’s childhood and strict upbringing.

BELOW – Rockie by the cabin on Fox Island. He is sometimes called “Rock.” In the Alaska letters his father almost always calls him “Rockwell,” while Kathleen calls him “Rockie.” Photo from a private Kent family album.

Kent probably began work on his book by mid-summer, maybe earlier. But the paintings had to wait until he got the manuscript off to the publisher.

BELOW – The first page of a draft of Wilderness. Notice "Sunderland, Vermont" at the top. I've been saying that "Egypt" was in Arlington. It is between Arlington and Manchester. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 

In an Aug. 8, 1919 letter to Carl Ruggles, 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! Although he hasn’t started preparing his paintings, he does mention one of them. Superman is in paint. It is one of the pictures I carried farthest in Alaska.  He is still focused on getting “Egypt” ready for is family. 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.

ABOVE – A review the Knoedler show of Kent’s pen and inks in the Aug. 3, 1919 Washington (D.C.) Times. This shows the pen and inks of "Superman." 

BELOW – Fridolf Johnson’s Rockwell Kent: An Anthology of His Work (1981) includes this image he labels as the painting, Superman, but he provides no source for the image or the painting’s location.

On Aug. 12, 1919, -- Rockwell informs Ruggles of Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s very fine and appreciative introduction to his book -- but he 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, 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 republished in 1996 by Wesleyan University Press with my foreword.

On Oct. 15, 1919, Rockwell wrote to Ruggles. Today I begin again to paint! So it’s a great day in my life. 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. He recognizes that the land and seascapes he recently finishes possess a freshness and veracity that give them distinction and show me, however, to be still young. Youth, vigor, strength – manliness. These themes meander through the Alaska works. Olson and pioneers like him are symbols of the wild. The North Wind and Bear Glacier represent the essence of wilderness and wildness itself. These elementals keep one young, as Kent summarizes in his Alaska book -- The still deep cup of the wilderness is potent with wisdom, he writes, Only to have tasted it is to have moved a lifetime forward to a finer youth. His own wildness -- his daemon -- emerges from this fierce Alaska land and seascape and helps keep him young.

ABOVE – October 15, 1919 letter from Kent to Ruggles. He writes Today I begin again to paint! in the third paragraph. Note the Rockwell Kent Incorporated stamp at the top, and Arlington as the location of "Egypt." 

BELOW – Undated letter from Carl Ruggles to Kent. It must have been written in Oct. 1919 or later since he asks about the name of Kent’s new son, Gordon – and he wonders whether one of Kent’s works has been sold. Letters from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Kent writes on Jan. 1, 1920 to Ruggles – I’m swamped with work. My book proofs are descending upon me now and have to be carefully revised, more drawings have to be made for the damned thing – and my painting is far from done. I am ashamed of having said that I’d do what I can by any means carried out. It is just simply impossible.

There were reasons why preparing some of the paintings was frustrating. Kent scholar Scott Ferris notes in Rockwell Kent’s Forgotten Landscapes (1998), that most of Kent’s earlier Alaska paintings share one common feature: their canvasses have a single blue thread woven into their fabric  -- possibly fabric that Kent purchased from his supplier in Seward. As Kent informed Jim Ryan, when I returned from Alaska I removed all the pictures from the stretchers and rolled them up…having been rolled up made it necessary to mount most of them on board; and the job of so mounting them accounts for some of the pictures having remained unfinished.” (In later years Kent continued to work on these unfinished Alaska paintings and make varied copies. One of those paintings, Sunglare, has the copyright symbol United American Artists beside his signature, indicating a later date, according to Ferris. When an image of the painting appeared in the January 1942 issue of Fortune magazine (titled Alaska Scene), it was dated 1919-1927.)

 As 1920 begins, Kent and Ruggles plan to spend some time together at “Egypt,” but both are busy. Kent probably has to back out due to work on the paintings.  Do you forgive me? I expected to see you here this week, he writes, What a break for us that would have been. You will try to make it when you can, won’t you? This is a stupid letter. I can at least say one unstupid thing. Kent wishes his friend happiness in the accomplishment of his dreams…so…get to work and make another great opera. Kent assures Ruggles that he is years ahead of the critics and listening public.  Carl, for heaven’s sake begin the new great work. I don’t believe you’ll hear your Sunken Bell {one of his compositions} for thirty years. You’re one of the few great men I’ve ever met or seen…

Bobb Edwards writes of Ruggles and his unfinished opera, The Sunken Bell:

Composer. His music has often been compared to that of his friend, Charles Ives, though unlike Ives' sprawling, exuberant works, Ruggles' compositions were short, highly concentrated and monolithic in their sound. They have such mystical titles as "Sun-Treader" (1931), "Angels" (1938), "Men and Mountains" (1941), and "Evocations" (1955). He spent more than a decade (1912 to 1923) writing an opera, "The Sunken Bell", only to destroy the manuscript; surviving sketches show that it would have been a masterpiece. In the 1950's he gave up composing to devote himself to abstract painting. The best approach to his music is summed up by Ives, who responded to a heckler of "Sun-Treader" by saying, "When you hear strong, masculine music like this, get up and use your ears like a man! SOURCE

Feb. 11, 1920 Kent to Ruggles – As the time approaches when I must crate and ship my pictures the amount of work left to be done on these seems impossible. I’ll have fifteen canvases – and today I completed the first one. Besides this they’ll be twenty odd small paintings. I’m to have the two smaller galleries on the ground floor at Knoedlers. That’s just as good as the big one. My catalogue cover and announcement card are now being produced. I think you’ll like them. I hope so. I’m reading Wagner’s “Autobiography”, a thrilling book – especially, I should imagine, to one of my calling to whom the vicissitudes of author artists life can be so sympathetically understood. I think very much of you as I read this book and rejoice that the time for seeing you is so close at hand. He and Kathleen are planning a trip to see him. I’m writing without inspiration – all that I have goes into these pictures. It is so fatiguing. Well – it will soon be over. Mrs. Sterner came up here to see my pictures and is widely enthusiastic. It’s good to have your business manager’s enthusiasm.

BELOW – M. Knoedler and Company Brochure cover for Rockwell Kent’s Alaska Painting Exhibition.

Feb. 18, 1920 to Ruggles – On Saturday we all migrate to New York. It’s a thrilling occasion for me. Not only is my exhibition to occur during my stay there but my book – my first book! – appears. Egmont Arens, who edits a periodical called “Playboy”, was given, by Putnam’s, the proofs of my book, to read. Upon reading the book – twice over – he wrote me the most thrilling letter I have in my life received. I’ll show you the letter. {I have been unable to find that letter.}This was as amazing to me as it was totally unexpected. Arens is a man of real power and understanding. I only hope that his (penetration??) may not in this case prove itself to have been exceptional!  My pictures are nearly all done. (Twice?) indeed! All but two of them are quite conventional landscapes or marines; but these have, I believe, a freeness and veracity that give them (distinction?) and show me, ____, to be still young. # The two that are of most significance to me are my “Superman” and “The North Wind” – Will and Energy. Well – there’s little to be gained in discussing this with you. You’ll soon see them and make up your own mind. (As I wrote in the last entry, the painting Superman has not been seen since the 1920’s. We’re not sure what happened to it.) Kent wants to get together with Ruggles in New York and asks him to mail him in care of Knoedlers with his phone number. Before going to the city, Kent will first go to his mother’s home in Tarrytown. I’m more than eager to see you and Charlotte. God! what a happy time this will be for us in New York!

On April 8, 1920 Kent writes to Ruggles – 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 the great pile of treasure that you have.

NEXT ENTRY

PART 3

WILDERNESS AND THE ALASKA PAINTINGS

THE REVIEWS