NOVEMBER 4 - 7 PART 3: TIERRA DEL FUEGO

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018

Part 2 – Back from Tierra del Fuego

November 4-7, 2019

ABOVE – Rockwell Kent with his fellow traveler, Ole Ytterock, aboard the SS Curaca on their way to Punta Arenas, Chile in 1922. Ytterock, a sailor from Norway, was known as “Willie.” These hand-colored glass lantern slide are courtesy of the Rockwell Kent Gallery at the Plattsburgh State Art Museum, State University of New York. For an interesting article about this trip.

BELOW – Photo take on Bayly Island, Chile in 1923. Kent is holding Kathleen Kent Garcia, an infant named after him who he has just baptized.

be watchful...but have your finger ready at the trigger.

…I, on one of my New York visits in the early spring of 1922, fed up with the whole emotional mess into which I had gotten myself, could say – and probably aloud, I was at that time so distraught—: “If there’s a worse place in the world than New York City I will go there.” Within ten minutes of the thought I was aboard a subway, bound down-town. And a half hour later I was shaking the hand of Joe Grace, thanking him for his promise of a passage on a Grace Line freighter to the port nearest to Cape Horn, Punta Arenas, Chile. Thank God! And now to work.

         Rockwell Kent in his autobiography, It’s Me O Lord (1955) p. 357

The plunge into that Long Island pond resulting in his affair with “Lydia,” may not have been the only emotional entanglement Kent has in mind. In the fall of 1921, Kent writes to Juliana Force who has been overseeing Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney’s exhibitions. She invites Kent to visit her Buck’s County, Pennsylvania home. There he meets Juliana’s brother Charles Rieser and his wife, Irene. Kent wouldn’t forget Rieser’s pretty, young wife. Kent does leave with a commission to decorate some the Juliana’s doors. Later he confirms the assignment details in a letter, while asking Juliana a favor. He needs help in convincing an anxious woman friend that he does indeed love her and isn’t seeing someone else. Juliana ignores him, wisely deciding to stay out of his antics, and suspecting he is indeed playing around. About the same time, Kent convinces her to provide his composer friend, Carl Ruggles, with a patronage. She ends up supporting Ruggles through 1925. (Berman pp. 176-7).

Expeditions and races to the North and South Poles are popular in the early years of the 20^th century. Always intrigued with adventure, Kent probably follows these news events closely. He has experienced the north in Newfoundland and Alaska. With the success of Wilderness his publisher and friend, George Putnam, urges him to write and illustrate another adventure book. The southern regions now beckon him as they had for years. He had been reading Fridtjof Nansen while on Fox Island.  his friend George Chappell provides him a personal introduction to Charles Wellington Furlong. Furlong has not only explored Patagonia Tierra del Fuego, but also Africa, Central America and the Middle East. During World War I he served as an aide to President Woodrow Wilson in the Balkans.

BELOW – Charles Wellington Furlong. Wikipedia photo.

In an April 30, 1922 letter, Furlong advises Chappell to warn Kent about the unsafe conditions in the area. Southern Patagonia has been in the throes of terror the last six months or more because of desperate bands of outlaws burning ranch homes and committing all kinds of depredations among the isolated sheep ranchers of the East Coast, so I imagine, if these conditions still prevail, that it would be really unwise if not unsafe to go into that part of the country just now. Advice like this is more likely to wet Kent’s appetite than discourage it. The artist works quickly. He arranges to meet Furlong for lunch in Boston. Kent describes the encounter in It’s Me O Lord. After some discussion, Furlong asks, And now, tell me what you’re taking in the way of firearms. Kent has no desire for killing, humans or animals – but he doesn’t want to appear naïve to Furlong. That, Colonel, is just what I’ve been wanting you to tell me. What should I take? He was told to get pencil and paper and write it down. It sounded like an arsenal, Kent recalled. Cannon to the right of me, cannon to the left of me, cannon in front of me: I saw myself looking like an illustrated battle poem. After supplying him with a list of weapons, Kent saw the Colonel had only warmed up. When you are traveling in Tierra del Fuego, Furlong warned, be watchful; be on your guard. If you meet a stranger and he, let’s say, asks you for the time of day, be agreeable: tell him the time, but have your finger ready at the trigger. That face-to-face, eye-to-eye encounter with the Colonel at least convinced Kent to take with him a long-barreled Colt .22 revolver. For many years Chile and Peru had fought over boundary disputes, and the area could be dangerous for travelers.

BELOW – A Nov. 14, 1922 article in the The Central New Jersey Home News (Brunswick, NJ).

Kent needed more cash for the trip. For years he had worked illustrating some of Chappell’s writings. Chappell published frequently in Vanity Fair, and wrote humorous travel parodies using the pseudonym Walter E. Traprock. Rockwell and George split a commission for a series of stories for the New York Tribune, which gained Kent $3900. A few years earlier he had met Joseph Grace, the owner of a shipping concern that traveled to South America, and made arrangements for a free passage.

ABOVE – Joseph P. Grace's obituary in the July 15, 1950 issue of the New York Times.

BELOW – Pre-World War I route map for Grace Lines. Source 

At the Grace Line dock in Brooklyn, in late May 1922, his wife, Kathleen, and friend Carl Zigrosser watched him board the S.S. Curaca on his way to Punta Ares.

I am not going to summarize Kent’s Tierra del Fuego trip on this website. but rather refer you to a fine article: Seeking a new paradise for mankind: Rockwell Kent in Tierra del Fuego and the creation of a new national image for Chile by Fielding D. Dupay. The author describes himself as an independent researcher who studies early 20^th century New York City transnational artists. Residing in Ecuador, Fielding is also compiling the catalogue raisonné of the Swiss-born, American sculptor, Arnold Giessbuhler (1897-1994).

I would also suggest you read Chapter Nine: Voyaging Toward Cape Horn in David Traxel’s 1980 biography of Kent, An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent.

And, of course, to get the personal version of the trip, read Rockwell Kent’s book, Voyaging: Southward from the Straight of Magellan (1924)

SOURCES – Rockwell Kent letters at the Archives of American Art; An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent (1980) by David Traxel; Kent's autobiography, It's Me O Lord (1955); and Rebels on Eight Street: Juliana Force and the Whitney Museum of American Art by Avis Berman (1990).

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