A Little Bit of Everything

Story by Christena Rulli
Photos courtesy of Plattsburgh State College Museum, Rockwell Kent Gallery and Collection, Bequest of Sally Kent Gorton.

Lobsterman. Dairy farmer. Carpenter. Architect. Illustrator. Printmaker. Well driller. Writer. Painter. All of these different jobs were filled by Rockwell Kent. Between Moby Dick's pages, his illustrations break up the text. In a used bookstore, you may find a copy of Wilderness: A Journey of Quiet Adventure, which he wrote. At Plattsburgh State University College, you can view a collection of his paintings. If you take a trip to AuSable Forks, you can even see his house; Kent was a very versatile person whose life started and ended in New York.

Born in Tarrytown, New York, Kent lived with his mother, siblings, and his Aunt Jo. He began his education at Cheshire Academy, a boarding school in Connecticut. Aunt Jo was a painter, so as a result, he became exposed to her artistic creativity. Some of his talents were shown early through drawings, pyrography, and decorative writing. He also helped his aunt with china painting, which was sold to help support the family. “Young people don't need to be taught art, ever. And most certainly not when they are blessed as I was, with a painter aunt at home; I had example and, from my mother, encouragement,” he wrote in It's Me O Lord, his autobiography.

"He was very unusual, but had a very easy way about him."

After Cheshire, Kent attended New York City's Horace Mann School, where he studied woodworking and technical drawing. He then went to Columbia University in 1900 to study architecture. While learning this trade, Kent went to William Merritt Chase's summer school in Shinnecock Hills on Long Island.

He soon left Columbia to be a painter. He was inspired by the exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and enrolled in the New York School of Art. “It was an act of self-will to have renounced my study of architecture, my degree, and with it, an assured career. And it was sheer stubbornness, fortified of course by the firm belief that I had chosen well, that enabled me, when I broke the news to them at home, to withstand the pleading of my deeply disappointed mother and aunt and brush aside their dire warnings of a life of poverty,” he wrote in his autobiography.

While attending Chase's summer school, Kent learned more about his craft.

For inspiration in both writing and painting, Kent traveled the world. After studying with painter Abbott H. Thayer in New Hampshire, he went to Monhegan Island, Maine, where he created a Monhegan Summer Art School. After a brief stay in Newfoundland, Kent began to do illustrations for extra money, using the pseudonym Wm. Hogarth Jr. His earnings eventually funded a trip to Alaska, where he went for five months with his son, Rockwell. Upon his return, he produced sketches for the Knoedler Gallery.

“The drawings showed our way of life, a father's and his little son's; they showed or hinted at, natural splendors of the world that we had lived in and revealed to some degree how it had moved us. They showed us at our simple daily chores; they showed the happiness our daily lives afforded us,” Kent wrote in his autobiography about his Alaskan drawings.

"He was an unique and interesting person who was way ahead of his time"

Other places Kent went include Ireland; Greenland; Puerto Rico; and Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina. While in Puerto Rico, Kent worked on a mural that stirred some uproar. In the piece was a message written in Eskimo, which translated to encouragement for Puerto Rican independence. Kent also visited France, and became popular in the former Soviet Union, where he eventually donated several of his works to the Friendship House in Moscow. He had multiple exhibitions there, and he later went on to win the Lenin Peace Prize.

Kent moved to the Adirondacks in 1927, and used the area as his muse, while also creating some more controversy. An advocate of the Socialist Party, Kent supported Henry Wallace in 1948 in his campaign for presidency. His town boycotted his dairy business, as a result of the ‘Vote for Wallace' milk caps he had printed. During the McCarthy era, he also got into trouble for refusing a passport. This led to the Supreme Court case, Kent v. Dulles in 1958, which subsequently resulted in a decrease in his sales.

Rockwell Kent at work in his office in 1948.

Pearl Maicus, a resident in Ausable Forks, New York, knew Kent, who worked with her father, a contractor. "He was an unique and interesting person who was way ahead of his time," she says. According to Maicus, no one really traveled in that time period, so people were not familiar with Kent and did not understand his paintings.
"People did not know where he got his thoughts from. He did things that irritated people. When he would walk into town wearing shorts, people would talk about him because they didn't understand him," she says.

In his late years, Kent, along with his third wife Sally, pushed toward making a legacy with all of his works. Throughout his life, his work was shown in multiple galleries throughout the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Incorporating nature and humanity are two of his trademarks; each stroke on his paintings and sketches are made with a firm hand to deliberate and captivate the viewers. Along with these two outlets, Kent's talent is also captured in certain books, bookplates, and Christmas cards, where it will remain a legacy to him as an artist. Though he died in CVPH Medical Center in 1971, his work lives on.

As for Pearl Maicus, she will always remember him. "I was always impressed by him—not only with his painting, but because he designed pottery and dinnerware. He also helped many people with their artwork and encouraged them, like Arto Monaco. He was very unusual, but had a very easy way about him. Sometimes the thoughts he got were so fast that he was hyper—he had such an imagination," she recalls.

Have you seen any of Rockwell Kent's creations?

Rockwell Kent's Written Works

Wilderness: A Journey of Quiet Adventure in Alaska: (1920) a book written on his travels in Alaska with his son.
Voyaging Southwards from the Strait of Magellan: (1924) about his travels to Tierra del Fuego.

N by E : (1930) a book about Kent's attempt to sail to Greenland in a boat with two other people.
Salamina:(1934) Kent wrote this about his time spent in Greenland.
This is My Own (1940) and It's Me O' Lord (1955) are both autobiographies written by Kent about his life.

Other books Illustrated by Kent

Faust by Goethe: A New American Translation by Carlyle F. MacIntyre with German Text. Special edition, New Directions, 1941.

Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer
Covici-Friede, 1930.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare; the Cambridge edition text, as edited by William Aldis Wright.
Garden City Books, 1936.

The Decameron; translated by Richard Aldington by Giovanni Boccaccio
Garden City Publishing Company, 1949.

Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare
The Printing house of Leo Hart, 1931.

Paul Bunyan by Esther Shephard
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1924 & 1952.