?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971) Sketches aboard the Hans Egede.
Bound autograph book including two ink drawings by Kent, 1933-36. The book 180x140 mm; 7x5½ inches. Each drawing signed, dated, and dedicated.
Provenance The dedicatee, Charly Mortensen, telegraph operator of the Hans Egede. Private collection, Massachusetts.
Note This autograph book contains several drawings and inscriptions by Mortensen and passengers of the Hans Egede, including by Kent and his teenage son, Gordon. This lot is accompanied by seven photographs of the Hans Egede and of its expeditions.
The present autograph book belonged to Charly Mortensen, the telegraph operator aboard the Danish steam merchant ship, Hans Egede. Between 1929 and 1935, Rockwell Kent made two of his three voyages to Igdlorssuit, Greenland aboard the Hans Egede.
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. With the ultimate goal of sailing around Cape Horn onboard a freighter in 1922, Kent travelled 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.
