Rockwell Kent

American artist and writer, among the highest paid commercial artists and one of the most prolific and versatile artists the US ever produced. Kent was equally adept in architecture, textiles, watercolors, engraving, murals, lithographs, cartoon advertising, xylography and oils. Known for his stark, powerful style, he successfully combined the classic in form with the romantic in feeling. Among the most successful artists of the twentieth century, his major works of art include "Winter," "Down to the Sea," "Lone Woman" and "Toilers of the Sea." With various works on display in world class museums in the U.S., Europe and Russia, including the US Post Office Building in Washington, DC, art critic Thomas Craven once wrote "Kent is a man of great talent and a superb craftsman in every department of art."

Kent was the son of Rockwell Kent, a mining engineer and lawyer, and homemaker Sara Holgate. Kent's talent showed early and he studied art at New York's Columbia University, where he studied with Kenneth Hayes, Robert Henri and William Chase. Making his debut at The Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910, he did not become well known until the publication of his first book, "Wilderness, a Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska" in 1920. Inseparable from his art is his writing. "I have always written...I have always had ideas for pictures and ideas to be expressed in words. I'm exactly as much a writer as a painter, not because I do either particularly well, but because I think in terms of art and in terms of literature. " A globetrotter, Kent lived in Maine, New Hampshire, Alaska, Newfoundland, the South of France, Ireland, Greenland and Tierra Del Fuego, painting exotic landscapes along the way. His second book, "Voyaging Southward From The Straits of Magellan," 1925, chronicled his foray at the lower tip of South America, followed by "Salomina" in 1935, a tale of his Inuit housekeeper during his three year sojourn in Greenland.