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The Kent Collector, SPRING 2009 Vol. XXXIII, No.1  Cover: Hispania, Greeting Card, circa 1938
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‘We shall have no art but what our cultural soil will yield:’
Homeland and Nationalism in the Art of Rockwell Kent
by Elizabeth McGoey Often lauded as a truly American artist, Rockwell Kent enjoyed a fruitful and critically acclaimed career as a painter, draftsman, illustrator and printmaker. Early in his artistic endeavors he was referred to as a great American hope.1 A closer look into Kent’s life and work, however, reveals a rather more complex framework for a discussion of nationalism. Active early in the twentiethcentury through his death in 1971, the span of Kent’s life and work is littered with nationalist contradictions that complicate strict notions of American loyalty and solidarity. He was the kind of virile, independent, adventurous man one would define as having an American character, though never hesitating to channel these impulses for causes he believed in, whether or not they were part of the government’s political goals. This paper examines Kent’s “Americanness” through his spiritual and artistic connection to Monhegan—a bond that would ultimately shape his later political and social agendas. In tracing these complex ties to nationhood through Kent’s paintings from 1905-1912, relating them to later works provides a means to explore contradictions in the artist’s interpretation of nationalism. OF INTEREST A Descriptive List of the Greeting Card Art of Rockwell Kent Part VI of a series by Robert Rightmire Exhibition News The Late Bloomers: Rockwell Kent meets George Angell by Eleanor Robinson KENTIANA AT AUCTION KENTIANA FOR SALE |
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