Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), an American artist was born in Tarrytown, New York, was well educated in art. He did his first significant work at Monhegan Island, Maine. Later he traveled widely, doing other landscape and seascape work in Newfoundland, Alaska, Terra del Fuego and Greenland. He also did a great deal of work illustrating working people, serving as an illustrator for The Masses, a popular left-wing magazine.
Approached in 1926 by publisher R. R. Donnelley to produce an illustrated edition of Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, Kent suggested Moby Dick instead. Published in 1930, the deluxe edition sold out immediately; a lower-priced Random House edition became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. A previously obscure book, Moby Dick was rediscovered by critics in the 1920s. The success of the Rockwell Kent illustrated edition was a factor in its becoming the recognized classic it is today.
Kent was active in left-wing politics. In 1939, Kent joined the Harlem Lodge of the International Workers Order (IWO), a pro-Communist fraternal organization. A lithograph by Kent became the organization's logo in 1940, and from 1944 to 1953 he served as the organization's President.
He was a victim of McCarthyism during the 1950s. As a devotee of realistic art, he had also fallen from popular favor.
List of works written and illustrated by Rockwell Kent
- Voyaging Southwards from the Strait of Magellan - About Kent's travels in Tierra del Fuego.
- - About the year Kent and his young son spent living on Fox Island in Resurrection Bay , Alaska.
- N by E - About Kent's disastrous attempt to sail from New York to Greenland.
- Salamina - About the year Kent spent living and working in Igdlorssuit , Greenland.
- It's Me, O Lord! - Kent's autobiography.
- This is My Own - An autobiographical account of Kent's struggles with the US establishment from the 1930s through to the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s.
List of works written by others and illustrated by Rockwell Kent
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