Rockwell Kent

Hans Hinrichs, Staten Island (acquired directly from the artist)

Herbert Hinrichs, New Jersey (acquired by descent from the above)

Sotheby's, New York, 19 May 2004, lot 116 (consigned by the above)

Private Collection (acquired at the above sale)

D. Wigmore Fine Art, New York

Acquired from the above in 2021 by the present owner

New York, Wildenstein Galleries; Cincinnati, OH, A. B. Closson, Jr. Company; Los Angeles, Stendahl Art Galleries; Stockton, California, The Haggin Museum; Milwaukee, Chapman Memorial Library, Milwaukee-Downer College; Beloit, Wisconsin, Theodore Lyman Wright Art Hall, Beloit College; Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall and (possibly) Abilene, Texas, Abilene Museum of Fine Arts, Know and Defend America: Forty Paintings of Our Country and of the Out-Posts of Our Hemisphere, 1942-1943, no. 15

New York, D. Wigmore Fine Art, Realism to the Edge of Abstraction, 2019

We would like to thank Scott R. Ferris for preparing the following comment:

In the catalogue for Know and Defend America Kent simply described it thusly: “An inlet of the sea at Tasiussak.” The title in the catalogue is “Ice, Snow and Rock,” which differs from Kent’s typed, tape label (attached to the verso of the plywood on which this canvas was originally mounted), titling the painting as “Ice, Sea and Rock,” and the artist’s own (repeated) handwritten notes, preparatory to the exhibition, which confirms his title, “Ice, Sea and Rock.” 

The painting would have been conceived during Kent’s second trip to Greenland – 1931-1932. The geographic area that is depicted is Tasiussak, which is in the Upernivik District. According to Kent’s diary, published as Rockwell Kent’s Greenland Journal (Ivan Obolensky, Inc. New York, 1962), he would have been in the area of Tasiussak between August 10 and 25, 1932. In Kent’s entry for August 13th he wrote: “I’m sitting now in my tent with primus [sic] roaring and rain pelting; the third day of this. One day here was fair and I worked constantly. That night, at eleven, as I sat painting the stupendous storm sky that was over us, it began to rain.” (See the painting, Storm Clouds: West Greenland. Ferris and Pearce: Rockwell Kent’s Forgotten Landscapes, page 58.) And on the 25th he wrote: “We got to Tasiussak at about two in the morning. After a night’s sleep, coffee at Bestyrer Hans Nielsen’s house, I painted.” 

Acquired from the artist by Hans Hinrichs. Hinrichs, a publicist for the Manitowoc, Wisconsin based brewer, Rahr Malting Company, had hired Kent to write and illustrate a book on his employer’s anniversary, To Thee, America: A Toast in Celebration of a Century of Opportunity and Accomplishment in America 1847-1947 (1946. Privately printed by A. Colish, New York). Hinrichs and Kent became friends and over a number of years Hinrichs acquired numerous artworks by Kent (which Hinrichs referred to as “The Rockwell Kent Gallery”: see Kent’s autobiography, It’s Me O Lord, page 562), including several paintings, of which this was one. 

The technique used on this canvas is virtually the same as what was used on “Greenland Scene,” a.k.a. “Godthaab District Fjord, Greenland,” Rockwell Kent Gallery, Plattsburgh State Art Museum, and sections of Kent’s painting Dead Calm: North Greenland, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) – similar to the dry brush technique used by Andrew Wyeth: a lightly primed canvas on which pigments are applied without the enhancement by such additives as linseed oil, or, for that matter, without covering the pigment with a varnish (which Kent usually did).