Rockwell Kent: The Work of Art

This iconic artist occupied a unique place in American art and is known for his luminous views of the Atlantic coastline.

A painter, printmaker, writer, and adventurer, Kent is beloved for his stylized landscapes and especially his depictions of coastlines, particularly in Maine, where he found inspiration in the stark beauty of wilderness, and in daily life set against the scale and force of the natural world.  

This publication centers on Kent’s paintings of Monhegan Island, Maine, where the artist built a house in 1906 and worked alongside the island’s fishing community. Using Monhegan as a point of entry into Kent’s wider practice, essays situate his work within the American Social Realism movement and feature examples of his illustrations and influences beyond Maine. Additional texts address the formation of Kent’s notion of the artist as worker, his dialogues with other painters and with architecture, and his international reputation as an artist. One contribution, by a local lobsterman, offers a unique perspective on Kent’s depictions of living and working year-round on Monhegan. 

Bringing together works from institutions across the country, as well as from Jamie Wyeth’s definitive private collection, this volume includes works from former Soviet Russia collections rarely seen in the West. The only major Kent monograph in print, it offers a long-overdue account of his contribution to twentieth-century American art.