Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Before we get Kent and Rocky to Seward and their life on Fox Island, I want to go into more detail about his affairs, his concept of solitude, and how Rockie fits into the Alaska trip. Most accounts say that Kathleen objected and that Kent fought her and won. I think it’s more complicated, as the letters demonstrate. But first, let’s put this into a larger context. The Great War was like a glacier that advanced over the terrain and cleared away many old-world certainties. The seeds of these changes were planted in the years before the war with Darwin, Freud, Einstein and others. By 1918 as the war ended, many wondered if it had all been worth it with so many dead and wounded. The world-wide flu took many more lives. Women would soon get the national vote. Alaska and some other western states and territories had already done that. Prohibition seemed certain. Alaska had gone dry on January 1, 1918. Ot...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Friday night, August 10, 2018 – An event happened in Resurrection Bay worth noting in this Kent journal. Kent’s cabin was located at the northern cove on the west side of Fox island – at the northern end of that cove. West across the bay and a little to the south sits Bear Glacier around the corner of what today is named Callisto Head. Kent labels in Caines Head on his pen-and-ink chart of Resurrection Bay because it didn’t get the current name until 1930. On a clear day from his cabin, Kent could probably see a sliver of Bear Glacier’s snout. If he hiked to the southern end of his cove, which he and Rocky often did, he could see a bit more. If he ventured around that headland to Sunny Cove, Kent could get an even better view. He could see it best when he took his small dory out of his cove and risked heading a bit south – potentially dangerous in winter. The artist was fascinated with Bear Glacier...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 “Why do men love the wilderness? For its mountains? – there may be none. For its forests, lakes, and rivers? It might be a desert; men would love it still. Desert, the monotonous ocean, the unbroken snowfields of the North, all solitudes, no matter how forlorn, are the only abiding-place on earth of liberty.” Salamina by Rockwell Kent, p.22 Kent arrives in Vancouver today. One of the qualities I admire most about Rockwell Kent is his appreciation of solitude. No – “appreciation” is not the right word. A better word would be “need.” Solitude was essential for Kent. Not that he was a recluse or loner. He thrived in cities like New York as well. He needed that kind of intellectual stimulation. But there are other intellectual stimulants. Notice that his Alaska book – Wilderness – includes in its subtitle the phrase “quiet adventure.” One of the themes of Wilderness is that adventure doesn’t have to ...

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...