Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

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...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 “In retrospect, what a reckless adventure our expedition to Alaska appears to have been!” So wrote American artist Rockwell Kent nearly forty years after his adventure ended. This month marks the 100th anniversary of Kent’s journey to Alaska with his 8-year-old son and their stay on Fox Island in Resurrection Bay about 12 miles south of the town of Seward. He told the story with the publication of Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska in 1920, considered an Alaska classic. But he didn’t tell us everything. The adventure wasn’t as “quiet” as he made it out to be. I’ll get into some of that because… I’ll be following Kent’s journey week by week, maybe day by day, looking back upon it from 100 years later. Some reading this may know about Rockwell Kent. A few may be ardent fans. Others may know about me and my 40-year quest to learn more about this artist and his Alaska trips -- his ...