JANUARY 21-24 PART I: ROCKWELL KENT 1928-1935

100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2019

Part 1 – Rockwell Kent 1928-1935

January 21-24,  2020

ABOVE – Victoria Ebbels Hutson Huntley (1900-1971) working with one of her lithography stones. Photo from the Huntley papers online from the Archives of American Art. The story of her professional relationship with Rockwell Kent is told in the next two entries. He helped her advance her career and she was very grateful. SOURCE

BELOW – While teaching art in Texas, Victoria discovered the talent of one of her students -- Texie Myers. I tell that story below. This photo of Myers with one of her sculptures is from the May 21, 1922 Vancouver Sun (British Columbia).

Eternal Man Beneath Momentary Man

“History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.”
― Victor Hugo (1802-1885) in Ninety-Three (1874, his last novel)

“It is one of the prime errors of historical and rational analysis to suppose that the “truth” and “original form” of a legend can be separated from its miraculous elements. It is in the marvels themselves that the truth inheres.”
― Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947)

ABOVE – Rockwell Kent working in his studio, probably at Upstate New York. Photo from the Rockwell Kent Gallery, Plattsburgh State University, NY.

Sometime in 1929, artist Victoria Ebbels Hutson writes to Rockwell Kent, whom she may have met about 1920. I am arranging an exhibition of lithographs of three famous American artists and you head the list!  Mr. {Erhard}Weyhe is lending me a group of lithographs – which include numbers of yours and others which I am offering to out of town women’s clubs and museums. I plan to give an opening lecture and shall…talk of you and others. Weyhe established his gallery at 794 Lexington Avenue, NYC, in 1919. Victoria asks Rockwell for even more information of your ever-interesting life and activities than I can glean from books and – such well-informed friends as Carl {Zigrosser}. She also asks for assurance that she has his consent to talk about his life.

BELOW – Victoria Ebbels Hutson Huntley in later years working with her lithography press. Archives of American Art.

Kent responds on May 29: I think I can help you most, since I am one of the subjects of your lectures, by giving you an absolute free hand to dispense to your hearers, as fully as authorized by me, anything that you may ever have heard about me, or that your  imagination can suggest as being at all consistent with my nature as you may care to picture it. He sends her a copy of the American Magazine with an article about him for which there is some basis of fact for most that is written there...{though} it has been pretty thoroughly sublimated into fancy by the gifted writer. It may therefore furnish good material for a talk. Kent also refers her to the May 1928 issue of Creative Art with an article he wrote about himself; the book Recent Gains in American Civilization which included an essay of his; and a copy of the Bookman with a review of one of Walter Pach’s books that expresses something of the regard with which I hold critics.

ABOVE – Rockwell Kent. Photo from the Rockwell Kent Gallery, Plattsburgh State University, NY.

By this time in 1929, Rockwell Kent is soon to reach the peak of his fame. His three books – Wilderness, Voyaging and N by E – and his art, and especially his woodcuts and illustrations -- are generally well respected. He now has an illustrated Candide by Voltaire under his belt that is getting positive reviews. But the some reviews of his work are not all positive. Reviewing a San Francisco exhibit in the Oakland Tribune (Sept. 9, 1928) with Kent’s paintings, Florence Wieben Lehre, Director of the Oakland Art Gallery, initially calls his display one of the most important one-man shows that we have received from the east in some time. They will be talked about for months to come. She briefly notes his life with his varied travels, and then adds: Whether it was during all this hectic state that the calm, cold paintings which compose the present exhibition were produced, we do not know. But calm and cold they are. And, frankly, so are we. Why anyone should go to so much trouble to collect the anemic experiences that find expression in Kent’s paintings is beyond our understanding. Cold, “intellectual” (without intellectual interest). Paper thin, they teach a great lesson. It pays to advertise. Be industrious. Repeat yourself endlessly, and on a large scale. From these things you will acquire great reputation, and need no longer fear the wolf that usually awaits at the artist’s door. Flippant? Certainly, Why not? Kent tries to be great, and succeeds in being only pompous and thinly cold to a degree that may, we admit, be his merit. But he is too inhuman for our appreciation, personally. And what does a pompous lack of human emotion deserve save the most flippant flippancy possible? # However, Rockwell Kent’s exhibition is one that no one should fail to see, even though the seeing may teach no more than that the warm failures of our neighborhood have more “kick” than the shallow perfection of the Rockwell Kents. And we do like Kent’s frames. Though this critic seems to be responding to what she considers the hype behind Kent's reputation,  some of her conclusion seems as much a defense and promotion of sunny California art over the frigid, arctic established New York cultural establishment.

But, as this critic suggests, the Kent reputation and legend continues to grow. Some credit most likely goes to his publicist at the Literary Guild of America, Selma Robinson, who worked to get N by E published and promoted as a club selection -- Kent’s friend, Carl Van Doren and Editor in Chief of the Literary Guild, who sent him a letter on Oct. 14 1930 with a blurb for the dust jacket of N by E.: Rockwell Kent must be nearly the most ambidextrous of men. He can write, so to speak, with one hand and draw with the other. What is more, he can do both with distinction, force, and clarity. He can and does. This -- Kent’s third book – was the one that finally brought him to the attention of the general adventure-story-reading public. Whether you do or do not like is art, how could one resist the story of his exploits? I don’t think Selma Robinson has been given enough credit in the Kent story, though there is correspondence between her and Kent in a G.P. Putnam folder at the AAA online page. 

Robinson is an interesting individual, but I have no intention of diving deeply down this rabbit hole. Perhaps some other Kent scholar will. Robinson was a journalist who eventually went into the publicity field before being recognized as a poet. While promoting him at Literary Guild, she convinces Kent to illustrate with woodcuts City Child, a book of poetry she published in 1931that begins her literary career. I’ll post a few articles below to give you some information about her. These articles certainly show how good Robinson is at operating the publicity machine for herself. In his NY syndicated column (Oct. 29, 1931 in the Miami (Oklahoma) Daily News-Record), William Gaines writes: Now comes Selma Robinson to propose tt she be accepted as the poet of the metropolis. She would put the spirit of the skyscrapers and the street scenes into poetry, for, she says she is of and for the city. She says: ”New York is not a place, necessarily, but a state of mind; a symbol of restlessness and ambition, of color.” Selma Robinson went to the crowded public schools, ate at lunch counters, sold orange juice to work her way through college, was a reporter on New York newspapers. # After several years of covering divorces and murders, she turned – we blush to say so – to publicity. # Was that how she got the grand idea of speaking for the metropolis? Selma Robinson knows well the publicity game, the process of building celebrity status and legend. She does does much for Rockwell Kent’s career during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s – as she helped promote his growing legend. From the correspondence, it seems that he recognizes this and is more than willing to help her out with the woodcuts for her book.

ABOVE  – A feature story about Selma Robinson in the April 5, 1931 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. She became an editor at McCall’s Magazine in 1956. Robinson wrote short stories and articles for The New Yorker, The Saturday Review of Literature, and Harper’s Magazine.

BELOW – In this Oct. 7, 1930 letter from Robinson to Kent we see a discussion of her poems and Kent’s possible illustrations, as well as her plans for publicizing N by E. In past entries, I’ve published some of the features stories that came out in the press about Kent’s third book.

BELOW – This article is from the Dec. 20, 1931 Waterloo Iowa Courier. Robinson was married to Howard Markel, president of the Merchants Bank of New York. They had two children Lael Markel Locke and Robinson Markel. She died Aug. 29, 1977 at age 78. Information about Robinson in these images comes from her obituary in the Aug. 31, 1977 New York Times.

In 1930 Kent will publish his now famous illustrated Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Melville was a pretty-much forgotten author at that time – remembered mostly for his sea adventure novels. The 100^th anniversary of Melville’s birth in 1919 revived interested in him, invigorated by a 1917 article by Carl Van Doren. Encouraged by Van Doren, in 1921 Raymond Weaver published Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic. Meanwhile, Melville’s granddaughter discovered the manuscript to Billy Budd in his papers, and critics rediscovered his poetry. By the late 1920’s the time was ripe for a new edition of Moby Dick, and who better to illustrate it than a respected seaman himself, Rockwell Kent. The special edition of Moby Dick was published in 1930 in a three-volume limited format, and later in a single-volume trade edition. Printed on the spine of the trade edition – Moby Dick Illustrated by Rockwell Kent. No mention of the author, Herman Melville, perhaps because Kent’s name was a better seller than the Melville at that time. Knowing the artist’s massive ego, the New York cultural establishment had a good laugh about the wording on the trade edition's cover.

During this period, Kent is often in the news with many stories of his exploits. So – it’s no surprise that he follows up his recommendations to Mrs. Hutson in that 1929 letter with an observation about legend vs. reality. He writes to her: There having occasionally come to me such extravagant {sic| legends of my activities that I have stopped caring a bit whether anything is true or not…It doesn’t happen to be true, though it has been told me, that I once pursued a sea-monster in a small boat, drove a harpoon into it, and was towed for miles out into the open sea. The important thing is that if I had been in a small boat and a sea-monster had appeared it would have frightened me to such an extent that I would have been foolish enough to throw a harpoon if I had had one, into the monster and had then lost my head so completely, as I probably would as not, to have cut the rope completely, and would undoubted towed many miles to sea. The wonder is, or would have been, that I escaped to tell the tale.

So far on this website I've spent considerable space discussing Rockwell Kent love life and his attitude toward free love. He could be condescending, disrespectful and cruel. He could also be kind and very helpful to other struggling artists. Earlier I discussed how he helped Alaskan writer Barrett Willoughby in getting her first book published. Later I'll write about how helped Alaskan painter and writer Clare Fejes get her first show in NYC. For now, I want to show how he helped Victoria Ebbels Hutson Hunter.

Victoria Ebbels was born on Oct. 9, 1900 in swampy and mosquito-infested Hasbrouk Heights, New Jersey. Her father was not a country person but acquiesced to his wife who was, so he bought the property. Everyone got malaria but Mr. Ebbels, so they moved to NYC when Victoria was only six months old. She drew and painted as soon as she could hold the tools. At age twelve she began attending classes at the Art Students League on Saturday mornings, and continued private lessons through high school. After graduation she convinced her parents to send her to the Art Students League instead of college. While Rockwell Kent is off to Alaska in 1918, Ebbels studied with John Sloan, Robert Henri, and Max Weber. (After her first marriage in 1925 to William K. Huston, she studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller. On Oct. 29, 1935, their daughter, Hazel, was born.) She knew George Bellows and some other of Kent’s friends and associates, and studied briefly with George Luks (one of Robert Henri's Group of Seven). She writes that Luks made her angry because he painted over her pictures. I was impatient and stormy and as soon as a teacher praised my work several times I left their class. Sloan was smart. He was kindly but his Irish temper and salty wisdom kept me with him. We became real friends. Weber only praised my work once, saying, “You will do things.” Luks prohisized {sic} that I would be a mural painter. (She would produce two murals, one at the Springfield New York Post office in 1937, and another at the Greenwich, Connecticut Post Office the next year.) During her three years at the Art Students League we can be certain she learned of Rockwell Kent, and may have met him. Sloan had a habit of beginning his classes by telling his students that he had nothing to teach them about earning a living as an artist. That may have encouraged Ebbels to enroll in the Teacher’s College at Columbia University. That got her a job in Denton, Texas at the College of Industry (later called the State Teachers College for Women). Teaching is the best discipline an artist can receive, she later wrote, and it is also creatively stimulating. Teaching also gave her the opportunity to discover new talent, which happened in 1922 while teaching in Denton.

BELOW – Victoria Ebbels Hutson, from the AAA online.

As she was recording attendance in class one day, the point of her pencil broke. A young student sitting in the front row, Texie Myers, quickly handed her a new pencil. As the March 12, 1923 Marshall Messenger (Texas) reported: Miss Ebbels took the little implement, was about to proceed with calling the roll, when she paused in amazement. # Beautifully carved on the tip of the pencil, almost alive in its sheer beauty of form and expression, was a running figure in bas relief suggesting the archaic Greek period. Its perfection of line denoted it as coning from the hand of one gifted far beyond the range of ordinary ability. # Questioning revealed the work had been done with an old razor blade and a pocketknife during odd hours of the day. Miss Myers, at that time 21 years old, had profited until then by no course of instruction. She was utterly untaught. Texie came from a large family – her father a waterworks engineer. As a child while her siblings played and did chores, she carved tiny figures out of spools and match sticks. Miss Ebbels gave Texie some wood blocks to work with and the results were stunning. Victoria helped Texie get recognized which also ended up helping her own career.

In later years Miss Ebbels described the incident: I wrote to John Sloan about her work and he urged me to send them north {Texie’s woodblocks} to one of the early exhibitions of the Society of Independent Artists. I did. They received unusual attention professionally. The student had given me her carvings and I thought they should be shown to a fine art gallery so…I took them to Carl Zigrosser at Weyhe Gallery in N.Y.C. # Carl Zigrosser was impressed and asked to show them. As I was leaving, he asked “How about you? You are an artist, I would like to see your work.” My response was, “Well, I am just a student and now am busy with my little daughter.” His answer was a brief, “Bring in your work.” I did. And Carl Zigrosser kept everything I brought and offered me an exhibition if I felt I could continue in the direction of several of the paintings.

ABOVE -- Texie Myers was featured in the 1923 Independent’s Show. Her woodcarving, Group of Dancers, is at left. SOURCE

BELOW – Myers saw some significant success and recognition at least through the 1930s. I haven’t done extensive research, but the furthest I’ve traced her is to this May 2, 1935 article in the Shreveport Journal (Louisiana). About a year after this article appeared, both Texie’s mother and father died of natural causes with days of each other as noted in the April 7, 1936 Marshall News (Texas).

Victoria Ebbels Huston Huntley was a student at the Art Students League just as Rockwell Kent’s first book Wilderness was published in 1920. She studied under some of his teachers and knew several of his friends. She probably met him during these early years before she went to Texas, but the first contact I find is in her letter to him on Jan 13, 1927. By this time, she is married to William K. Hutson, she has a two-year-old daughter, and she goes by the name of Victoria Ebbels Hutson. She addresses the letter as Dear Rockwell Kent and writes: You may be painting the North Pole or some other far away point. If you are in the city, I want you to see my pictures. Mr. Zigrosser at Weyhe has a group of wash drawings which I did in Texas. I would like to know what you think of “Women of the Wind” and “Rain Maidens.”

Victoria writes to Kent again again on Aug. 3, 1927, mentioning that she saw him at the Maverick but was unable to speak with him, thus this letter. The Maverick at Woodstock was an early New York art colony founded in 1910 by Hervey White, who has sometimes been called “the first hippie.” The colony was and still is famous for outdoor music festivals, art exhibits and theatrical performances. White had been in Colorado in the 1890s. His sister had told him of a free-ranging white stallion known as the “Maverick Horse.” The next year he wrote a poem about the horse. When he founded the New York art colony, he named it after that wild white stallion – a symbol of freedom, spirit and individuality. (SOURCE for information and the photo below)

BELOW – Hervey White

Victoria continues her letter: It is a long time since we met in the Fine Arts Gallery in New York. She may be referring to the Fine Arts Building where Marie Sterner was exhibiting work from the Junior Arts Patrons group. After that meeting, Kent sent her a letter an inspirational letter that she never forgot. (I have not been able to find that letter. It could be in the her letters at the AAA, but those haven’t been scanned and put online.) What Victoria writes next is echoes Kent’s words in Wilderness:

Some of the thoughts you expressed, she wrote, were a great help to me in the following years which I spent in Texas. # That was a wonderful time for me, one in which my dream of leaving “the crowd,” almost came true. In his Wilderness journal, Kent writes on Feb. 19, 1919 about how he and Rockie have both together by chance turned out of the beaten, crowded way and come to stand face to face with that infinite and unfathomable thing which is the wilderness; and here we have found OURSELVES – for the wilderness is nothing else. 

Victoria continues: Though people were there, they didn’t count. It was the earth so real and unadorned, so much the vital substance and the vastness of the sky that lived for me. And out of an apparent nothing, all riches blossomed. # That was happiness of a kind remote and ecstatic. But this vivid life of the now! How I wish that mankind could find their mate and enter the rhythm of this sweet reality. I wish that you might meet my husband and see my happy babe! The natural life that was intended for us all, feet planted in the earth, with spirits soaring to the stars. 

Happily married now in 1927, in later years she recalled that when she did find a husband in 1925 – everyone said “how dreadful, you’ll never become an artist now!” In those days everyone was talking about “free love. She ends this Aug. 3, 1927 letter to Kent – So out of the fullness of my heart, I send this little greeting to you and Mrs. Rockwell {Frances}. I was so happy to hear from Carl Zigrosser of your happiness. Please give my warm, good wishes to her and I hope that for you both much beauty may always be.

NEXT ENTRY

PART 2

VICTORIA EBBELS HUTSON HUNTLEY