ROCKWELL KENT (1882 1971) Sailors Farewell

Sale 2678 - Lot 85

Price Realized: $ 32,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)
Sailor's Farewell.

Watercolor and pencil on cream wove paper, 1935. 338x238 mm; 13¼x9⅜ inches. Titled, signed, dedicated, and dated in pencil, lower right.

Provenance
The artist.
Charly Mortensen, the dedicatee.
Private collection, Boston.

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Additional Details

Between 1929 and 1935, Rockwell Kent made two of his three voyages to Igdlorssuit, Greenland aboard the Hans Egede, a Danish steam merchant ship. Charly Mortensen, the ship's telegraph operator to whom the present watercolor was dedicated, befriended the artist during his treacherous, but spiritually fulfilling expeditions.

Kent was a celebrated artist and illustrator who was just as famous for his world voyages. He was born in Tarrytown, New York and enrolled in Columbia University as an architecture student in 1900. He soon abandoned his studies in favor of painting, inspired by his time with William Merritt Chase. He attended the New York School of Art and studied under Robert Henri, who introduced Kent, Edward Hopper, and George Bellows, to the artist colony on Mohegan Island, where the young artist remained year-round. His love of nature and solitude pushed him to go on expeditions, often accompanied by his son, Gordon. With the ultimate goal of sailing around Cape Horn onboard a freighter in 1922, Kent traveled as far as Tierra del Fuego, the trip inspired his second illustrated book. Although he purchased a large farm in Au Sable Forks, New York in 1927, Kent could not be tied to one place. His 1930 book N by E was based on his recent voyage and shipwreck in Greenland. By the time he was commissioned to illustrate an edition of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Kent was able to call on his own perilous expeditions for inspiration.