Rockwell Kent at the Portland Museum of Art

Rockwell Kent at the Portland Museum of Art


This summer is the one for viewing paintings, prints and drawings from the estate of one of America's most prolific artists, Rockwell Kent. A very talented painter, Rockwell lead a long and productive life as a painter, draftsman, author and world traveler. Through much of his later years, he was not widely exhibited in the U.S. because of his very strong left-leaning political views. Eventually during the McCarthy years, Kent was blacklisted from showing in the US, even though his imagry was mainsteam with the major emphasis being on landscape and portraiture. Finally in the fifties, he left for the Soviet Union where he was very well received. In fact a large number of his paintings were bequeathed to museums in the Russian cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. As a result there have been only a limited number of paintings available for exhibition in the United States, and those were not often shown because of Mr. Kent's political legacy. Showings of Kent's work have mostly been limted to New England and New York, with large exhbitions being rare.

The Artist in Greenland

However, currently there are several major exhibitions of Kent's work being shown in the northeast. The summer shows include the above mentioned show at the Portland Museum of Art; plus the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. is coordinating a large exhibiton entitled "The Distant Shores; The Odyssey of Rockwell Kent". The "Distant Shores" shows are spread out over three museums, with the other two being the Adirondack Museum and the Plattsburg State Art Museum, both being located in the Adirondacks region of upstate New York.