In addition to major oil paintings, such as Pioneers (Bowdoin College Museum of Art), Resurrection Bay (Portland Museum of Art), and North Wind (Phillips Collection, Washington, DC), Rockwell Kent returned from this trip with numerous examples of what he termed ‘Alaska Impressions,’ smaller pieces painted on panel in which he captured a fleeting reaction to the way sunlight and color played across snow-capped mountains and crystalline seas.

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In April of 1919, a collection of Alaska drawings was featured at M. Knoedler and Company and one year later the gallery hosted a display of his powerful Alaska paintings that provoked the following from American Art News: “[Kent’s paintings] evidence the spirit of Alaska in its lonely spaces, menacing glaciers, serrated hills and wave-torn coasts...His outlook is naïve, the organization of his themes ever dramatic and intense, his palette of the simplest. And the same mysticism and masterful, living strength in his recently exhibited drawings are repeated in these oils.”[1]

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[1] “Rockwell Kent’s Alaskan Views,” American Art News, March 6, 1920, p. 4

Provenance:

By descent through a family to private collection, Danvers, Massachusetts, to August 2020
To collection of her children, August 2020 to present