Welcome to the brand new Arthive! Discover a full list of new features here.

Winter. Island Monhegan

Rockwell Kent • Painting, 1907, 86×111.8 cm
Comments
0
About the artwork
This artwork has been added by an Arthive user, if it violates copyright please tell us.
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Landscape
Style of art: Realism
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1907
Size: 86×111.8 cm
Artwork in collection: Smart and Beautiful Natalya Kandaurova
Artwork in selections: 16 selections

Description of the artwork «Winter. Island Monhegan»

One of the first teachers of Rockwell Kent - Robert Henry – once advised him to change the situation. "You Know, Kent, - he said, - in Maine there is a place where, in my opinion, you'll be happy to write. It's a smallthe island is quite far out to sea. Island Monhegan".

Kent's advice. However, the first thing he felt, arriving on the island, was not a burst of inspiration, and a keen sense of shame. Here, among working men, casually beating with terrible disaster for pressing the piece, he felt worthless. He watched how cleverly the natives are driven with oars and by special and envied. He looked at the mighty, intertwined veins of the hands of fishermen and wanted the same.

On the island Monhegan Rockwell Kent was drilling wells, catching lobster, to build houses. He worked along with the locals – after all, they have ceased to consider it the "summer people", as other cranks with easels who came here in search of picturesque nature.

In his autobiography Rockwell Kent wrote: "Easier to dig a ditch than to write about it, said Oscar Wilde. What nonsense! Wilde never worked". On the island Monhegan formed a creative method, which Kent never cheated: if he had to draw a ditch, he took up the shovel.

The trip resulted in bloody blisters, strengthened muscles and 14 paintings that Kent put up in the gallery by William Clausen for the return to new York.

In the "new York sun" wrote: "If you want to experience the excitement, go to the gallery of Clausen and look at new paintings Rachilla Kent -- Donnerwetter! Yeah, he just knocks you off your feet, before you have time for something to grab onto his broad, realistic and impressive reproduction of the raging waves of the sea workers in boats, rugged cliffs and pristine wrapped in snow hollows... Paint put brush athlete. The artist allows himself the color dissonances that make you raise collar coat".

So, even garbled name, the first exhibition of Kent praised one of the most influential critics of those years, James Huneker.

As for the pockets of the "athlete", they remained empty. From first Monegasque cycle(1, 2, 3) sold only this picture, and that is not right.

Considering that "Winter. Island Monhegan" best reflects the harsh beauty of the island, Kent gave it to Robert Henry. Years later, he sold it to the Metropolitan Museum at a price ten times higher than the initial one, and the money sent to Kent. He liked the picture. Just Henry – the gift that citizen – understand how to pay for the ditches and lobster.

Author: Andrew Zimoglyadov
Comments