Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 On August 1st 100 years ago Kent and Rocky rose early aboard the train. By 7:30 they were all dressed up and waiting to arrive in Vancouver for breakfast. "There we shall take the first steamer we can and go north to Skagway where we’ll probably change to another. But this is all guess work." That wasn't to be the case. Kent liked to travel with little planning. From his letters, it's clear that he rarely knew precisely what would happen next.  He wrote many letters on the train -- to his mother, to his wife Kathleen, to Carl Zigrosser, and especially to his lover back in New York, Hildegarde Hirsch. Kent's tiny handwriting script is difficult to read normally, but all the bumps and jolts on the train, which he noted, makes it all the more difficult. At this point he'd given up on getting his wife to join him in Alaska, so he turned that effort toward Hildegarde. "Wha...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 “Above every other thought now is the sad realization that our days on this beloved Island are nearing an end. What is it that endears it so to a man nearly forty and a little boy of nine? We have such widely different outlooks upon life. It may be that Alaska stands midway between us, and that I, turning backward from the crowded world that I have known and learned to fear, meet Rockwell in his forward march from nothing – to this…It seems that we 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.” Rockwell Kent in “Wilderness” for Wednesday, February 19, 1919. The above quote contains the title of my book-in-progress. While the artist and his son are heading toward Vancouver, British Columbia on the Canadian Pacif...

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...

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 ...