Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 7

Rockwell Kent
Hail and Farewell

1930

About the Item

Rockwell Kent "Hail and Farewell" 1930 Wood Engraving on Paper Signed in Pencil Lower Right Sheet Size: 14 3/8 x 11 1/4 in. Image Size: 8 x 5 1/2 in. Framed Size: 17.5 x 13.5 in. Growing up in a genteel family in New York City, Rockwell Kent was a member of the rugged realist school of landscape painters as well as a popular illustrator and printmaker. His 1930 illustrations for Moby Dick are among his most lasting achievements. He was the first American artist to have work exhibited in the Soviet Union, a reflection of his Communist Party sympathies, which earned him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1967. This espousal of radical politics caused his career to suffer badly in the '50s because his leftist views caused him disdain among many Americans. However, his work, reflecting both realism and modernism, has earned increasing attention from American art historians. His subject matter is wide-ranging including scenes of Maine's Monhegan Island, the Adirondack Mountains, book illustrations, and commercial art renderings for companies including General Electric, Rolls Royce, and Westinghouse. Although his first love was painting, in addition to illustration, he also did fabric, ceramic, and jewelry designs, and spent time as a dairy farmer, carpenter, home builder, and lobster fisherman. His father, Rockwell Kent, Sr. was a partner in a prominent New York City law firm and an entrepreneur in Central American mining investments. His mother, Sara Ann Holgate, was the niece and surrogate daughter of James and Josephine Banker, one of New York's first-millionaire families. Young Rockwell's early childhood was divided between Hudson River Valley, Long Island, and New York City homes, each brimming with cultured surroundings and distinguished persons. However, that comfortable life came to an abrupt end in 1887 with the death from typhoid fever of Rockwell Kent, Sr., which left the mother with Rockwell Jr., age 5, and another son, and a daughter who was born shortly after the father's death. Now in a readjusted circumstance of genteel poverty, Kent was encouraged in his art talent by an aunt, Josie Banker who was a successful ceramic decorator and with whom he traveled in Europe. He studied mechanical drawing and woodworking at the Horace Mann School in New York, and this experience gave him a life-long respect for craftsmanship that is evident in his paintings and drawings. It was also during these years that he developed his understanding of discrepancies between social classes. He later recalled: "When I was a young fellow, I was very much disturbed by seeing some people with lots of money and lots of people with no money" (Smithsonian, 8/2000 by Scott Ferris). From 1900-1903, he joined William Merritt Chase's classes at Shinnecock and then entered the New York School of Art studying with Robert Henri and becoming close friends with George Bellows and Edward Hopper. His special mentor, however, was Abbott Thayer with whom he painted in New Hampshire and whose home was a place of wide-ranging discussion about topics including German lieder and Nordic sagas. All of this encouraged Kent to travel extensively. Later Kent married Kathleen Whiting, the niece of Thayer, and they had five children. In 1919, after returning from his Alaskan adventure, Kent decided to move his family out of New York City. Searching for a farm they could afford, Kent and Kathleen, found an isolated property high on the southern spur of Mt. Equinox, near Arlington, Vermont. It was called Egypt Farm. But Vermont was not the Eden-like existence he had envisioned and his infidelities and long absences eventually led to divorce. He was married two other times. He was an inveterate traveler whose wanderlust created subjects from a wide variety of locations and which caused him to be literally the starving artist, dependent upon outside sources for money. One of his supporters was Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. who for nine years gave Kent $300. a month in exchange for first selection of two paintings a year. Much influenced in Ireland by Thayer, Kent's artistic focus became landscape painting and the relationship between nature and humanity. He spent much time on Monhegan Island in Maine, a place he first visited in 1905 at the suggestion of Robert Henri. Although Kent stayed only until 1910, the place became closely associated with his name. Between 1915 and 1935, he visited Newfoundland, Alaska, Tierro del Fuego, France, Ireland, and Greenland. He also wrote designed, and illustrated a number of travelogues. In 1927, after his marriage to Frances Lee, he settled into a parcel of farmland near Ausable Forks, New York, where he built a studio and felt at home for the first time during his painting career. There he and his wife hosted numerous gatherings of prominent New York people including the Pulitzers, Putnams, and Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and John Dos Passos. In 1907, his first exhibition was held in New York, and he also exhibited with George Bellows and John Steuart Curry and members of The Eight before 1920. From 1918, he did numerous wood engravings and lithographs, and he left eighty-six paintings and hundreds of drawings, now scattered among museums. In Fall, 1998, the Monhegan Museum held a retrospective of his oil and ink paintings. Sources: Much of the above information is from Scott R. Ferris, specialist in the art of Rockwell Kent. He wrote most of the catalog entry for the Sotheby's auction (12/3/03), for the sale of Blue Day and has written the foreword for the reprinted edition of Kent's book, Salamina (Wesleyan University Press. Oct. 2003). On 25 May 2003, "CBS Sunday Morning" aired an article on Kent, and Ferris was interviewed along with Kent's son Gordon, and artist, Jamie Wyeth.
  • Creator:
    Rockwell Kent (1882-1971, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1930
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 17.5 in (44.45 cm)Width: 13.5 in (34.29 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Missouri, MO
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU74735027242
More From This SellerView All
  • Man
    By Elizabeth Catlett
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Elizabeth Catlett “Man” 1975 (The Print Club of Cleveland Publication Number 83, 2005) Woodcut and Color Linocut Printed in 2003 at JK Fine Art Editions Co., Union City, New Jersey Signed and Dated By The Artist Lower Right Titled Lower Left Ed. of 250 Image Size: approx 18 x 12 inches Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) is regarded as one of the most important women artists and African American artists of our time. She believed art could affect social change and that she should be an agent for that change: “I have always wanted my art to service black people—to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential.” As an artist and an activist, Catlett highlighted the dignity and courage of motherhood, poverty, and the working class, returning again and again to the subject she understood best—African American women. The work below, entitled, “Man”, is "carved from a block of wood, chiseled like a relief. Catlett, a sculptor as well as a printmaker, carves figures out of wood, and so is extremely familiar with this material. For ‘Man’ she exploits the grain of the wood, allowing to to describe the texture of the skin and form vertical striations, almost scarring the image. Below this intense, three-dimensional visage parades seven boys, printed repetitively from a single linoleum block in a “rainbow roll” that changes from gold to brown. This row of brightly colored figures with bare feet, flat like a string of paper dolls, raise their arms toward the powerful depiction of the troubled man above.” Biography: Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) Known for abstract sculpture in bronze and marble as well as prints and paintings, particularly depicting the female figure, Elizabeth Catlett is unique for distilling African American, Native American, and Mexican art in her work. She is "considered by many to be the greatest American black sculptor". . .(Rubinstein 320) Catlett was born in Washington D.C. and later became a Mexican citizen, residing in Cuernavaca Morelos, Mexico. She spent the last 35 years of her life in Mexico. Her father, a math teacher at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, died before she was born, but the family, including her working mother, lived in the relatively commodious home of his family in DC. Catlett received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University, where there was much discussion about whether or not black artists should depict their own heritage or embrace European modernism. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1940 from the University of Iowa, where she had gone to study with Grant Wood, Regionalist* painter. His teaching dictum was "paint what you know best," and this advice set her on the path of dealing with her own background. She credits Wood with excellent teaching and deep concern for his students, but she had a problem during that time of taking classes from him because black students were not allowed housing in the University's dormitories. Following graduation in 1940, she became Chair of the Art Department at Dillard University in New Orleans. There she successfully lobbied for life classes with nude models, and gained museum admission to black students at a local museum that to that point, had banned their entrance. That same year, her painting Mother and Child, depicting African-American figures won her much recognition. From 1944 to 1946, she taught at the George Washington Carver School, an alternative community school in Harlem that provided instruction for working men and women of the city. From her experiences with these people, she did a series of paintings, prints, and sculptures with the theme "I Am a Negro Woman." In 1946, she received a Rosenwald Fellowship*, and she and her artist husband, Charles White, traveled to Mexico where she became interested in the Mexican working classes. In 1947, she settled permanently in Mexico where she, divorced from White, married artist Francisco Mora...
    Category

    Late 19th Century American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Linocut, Woodcut

  • After the Painting of Secrets (Sister's Diary)
    By After Norman Rockwell
    Located in Missouri, MO
    *This color lithograph was done as a lithographic reproduction of Rockwell's original painting that was used for the cover of a 1942 Saturday Evening Post. After Norman Rockwell...
    Category

    Late 20th Century American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Custer's Last Fight
    By Fritz Scholder
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) "Custer's Last Fight" Lithograph Ed. 54/75 Signed and Numbered Site Size: approx 22 x 30 inches Framed Size: approx. 35 x 41.5 inches Born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, Fritz Scholder became a prominent Indian portrait, figure, and genre painter in Arizona. His father was part Indian, and Fritz Scholder chose to focus his art work on this part of his lineage and to express both an appreciation and disdain for Indian customs, traditions, and daily existence. He studied at the University of Kansas, Wisconsin State University, and with Wayne Thiebaud at Sacramento College in California. He earned an Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Arizona. A long-time resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, he has filled a number of artist-in-residence positions including Dartmouth College and the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute. In his work, he frequently showed the harsh, realistic side of Indians' lives and deaths including the affects of alcohol and other dissipations, but some of his depictions are humorous such as Indians on horseback carrying umbrellas. His brush-work is generally swift, and the tone often sombre and surreal. A major influence on his work was the contemporary British artist, Francis Bacon, from whom Scholder adapted ironic distortions into his canvases. In Scottsdale, he lived in an adobe-walled oasis of palm trees and oleander, amid skulls and skeletons. In the garden, several of Mr. Scholder's sculptures feature skull-like heads. In the library, an 18th-century skull engraved with witchcraft symbols shared shelf space with books printed before 1500. And the porch had been converted into a skull room, complete with Mexican Day of the Dead...
    Category

    1970s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Paper, Lithograph

  • The Blue Bicycle
    By Will Barnet
    Located in Missouri, MO
    The Blue Bicycle, 1979 Will Barnet (American, 1911-2012) 26 x 25.5 inches 41 x 40 inches with frame Titled Lower Center Signed and Dated Lower Right Edition 41/300 Lower Left From B...
    Category

    1970s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Study/Falling Man (Series II)
    By Ernest Tino Trova
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Study/Falling Man (Series II), 1967 By. Ernest Tino Trova (American, 1927-2009) 24 x 24 inches Wrapped to Foam Core Signed Artist Proof Lower Right Ernest Tino Trova (American, 1927...
    Category

    1960s American Modern Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Screen

  • Study/Falling Man (Series I)
    By Ernest Tino Trova
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Study/Falling Man (Series I), 1967 By. Ernest Tino Trova (American, 1927-2009) 24 x 24 inches Wrapped to Foam Core Signed Artist Proof Lower Right Ernest Tino Trova (American, 1927-...
    Category

    1960s American Modern Abstract Prints

    Materials

    Screen

You May Also Like
  • Shift Change, Social Realist Woodblock Print by Mike Goscinsky
    Located in Long Island City, NY
    Shift Change Mike Goscinsky, American (1933–2021) Woodblock on thin wove paper, signed, titled and numbered in pencil Edition of 15/75 Image Size: 14 x 19 inches Size: 22 x 26.5 in. ...
    Category

    1990s American Modern Landscape Prints

    Materials

    Woodcut

  • SLEEPING MAN (REST)
    By Will Barnet
    Located in Portland, ME
    Barnet, Will. SLEEPING MAN (REST). Szoke 42, Cole 41, Johnson 40. Woodcut, 1937. Edition of 10. Titled "Sleeping Man" at left, and signed at right, both in pencil. This print is usua...
    Category

    1930s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Woodcut

  • CHILD REACHING
    By Will Barnet
    Located in Portland, ME
    Barnet, Will. CHILD REACHING. Szoke 83, Cole 82, Johnson 65. Woodcut, 1940. Edition of 25. Titled and signed in pencil. 7 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches (image), 8 1/8 x 11 1/2 inches (sheet). ...
    Category

    1940s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Woodcut

  • AT THE SEASHORE
    By Will Barnet
    Located in Portland, ME
    Barnet, Will. AT THE SEASHORE. Szoke 69, Cole 68, Johnson 54. Woodcut printed in black, brown and white, 1939. There was no edition, only a few proofs printed by the artist on Japane...
    Category

    1930s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Woodcut

  • Hooves
    By Helen West Heller
    Located in Storrs, CT
    Hooves. 1927. Woodcut. 7 1/2 x 12 (sheet 11 7/8 x 15 1/8). Printed on heavy Japanese mulberry paper. Signed, dated, and titled in pencil. An example of this work is in the collectio...
    Category

    1920s American Modern Animal Prints

    Materials

    Woodcut

  • NIGHT NUDE
    By Milton Avery
    Located in Portland, ME
    Avery, Milton. NIGHT NUDE. Woodcut, 1953. Edition of 25 in black and white (there were a further 25 printed in black and blue). Signed, dated and numbered "6/25" in pencil, and also ...
    Category

    1950s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Woodcut

Recently Viewed

View All