Alaskan Inlet

PROVENANCE     

MacBeth Gallery, New York

Joseph James Ryan Jr, Arrington, Virginia

Peter Brady, his nephew, Arrington, Virginia and Florida

EXHIBITION          

Moscow, Russia, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

St. Petersburg, Russia, The State Hermitage Museum

Kiev, Ukraine, Kiev Museum of Western and Eastern Art

Odessa, Ukkraine, Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art

Riga, Latvia, The State Museum of Fine Arts, Exhibition of the Work                                                 of Rockwell Kent: Paintings and Graphics, 1957-1958, no. 14

Brunswick, Maine, The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Rockwell                                                   Kent: The Early Years, August 15 – October 5, 1969, no. 29, illustrated

LITERATURE         

R. Kent, It’s Me O Lord, New York, 1955, p. 136, illustrated

NOTE                       

This work is included in Scott R. Ferris and Richard V. West’s The                                                   Annotated Checklist of Alaska Paintings by Rockwell Kent as entry                                                      number AK1-5 accessible at  https://r5b.842.myftpupload.com/ 

HISTORY

In August, 1918 Kent and his eldest son, known as Rocky, traveled to                                                Alaska: staying on Fox Island, in Resurrection Bay, off the coast of                                                    Seward, until March, 1919. They shared the small island with the                                                      resident (then 71 year old) Alaskan pioneer, Lars Matt Olson. There,                                                on the west side of the island, on Northwest Harbor, Kent painted,                                                          drew, experimented with relief printing, and kept a diary that would                                       become his book, Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in                                                            Alaska. Alaskan Inlet depicts Kent’s view of the wooded headland,                                                       looking northwest across the harbor. Kent began several large                                                             paintings on site (as well as many smaller works that he referred to as                                               “impressions”). At the end of his stay on Fox Island he would roll up                                                 the canvases to ship home. Upon his return he would unroll and                                                     mount on board, many of these canvases, either completing them or                                                  “touching them up” at a later time. 

This painting is referred to by Kent as “Alaska Inlet” in letters from                                                 1954, but in the caption in his autobiography, It’s Me O Lord (1955) he                                        titles it “Alaskan Inlet.” A remnant label on the verso of the painting                                                 Titles the work, “Alaska Inlet” (authorship of handwriting unknown). 

There is an article about the estate in Virginia Living, December 2009                                               issue online at Virginialiving.com.