The Prints of Rockwell Kent: Catalogue Raisonne

Book Description

First published in 1851, Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words, "the greatest novel in American literature." The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale remains a peerless adventure story but one full of mythic grandeur, poetic majesty, and symbolic power. Filtered through the consciousness of the novel's narrator, Ishmael, Moby-Dick draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories, from the noble cannibal Queequeg to the natural history of whales, while reaching existential depths that excite debate and contemplation to this day.

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition contains original illustrations by Rockwell Kent and commentary that includes excerpts from one of Melville's letters to Hawthorne.

Customer Reviews:

Confusing, sometimes pedantic, always wonderful.......2006-07-20

This is tough novel: big, confusing, it leaves you wanting to re-read it.

If you wanted to know the difference in structure (as opposed to scale) between a short story and a novel, Moby-Dick (or, The Whale) is probably the as good an exemplar one would find of the novel form. Where a short story focuses on a single event, action, or mood, a novel tends to take the air a bit more -- perambulate, follow its own muse, wander. And wander Moby Dick does. It goes and goes and goes. Melville wrote that he had written a wicked novel. I wonder if that is perceptible to a 21st century sensibility. Melville knows that he's depicting characters who have abandoned critical parts of their pasts, their society, and their souls, parts that many of us today no longer recognize, let alone miss. He strolls through various modernisms: pantheism, Kantianism, indifferentism, relativism, pessimism, Romanticism. Ahab -- what to make of him: sacrilegious, demonic, monomaniac, striving. A shadow of Christian belief, of Calvinism, no longer sufficiently vital to bring salvation, but more than adequate to reinforce notions of depravity and condemnation, hangs over the novel.

On a lighter note, Moby-Dick will give you a new appreciation for Star Trek. The episodic nature of the novel makes possible a bunch of self-contained mini-plots, each of which could be spun into its own little story. There's the encounter with a ship that has been taken over by a charismatic preacher and his converted followers. There's a ship in search of an abandoned crew, and one that is filled with bon vivants, appropriately named "The Bachelor."

There's undoubtedly a lot more than I can write about in a tiny review like this. Like a whale, this novel's soul is submerged most of the time, only occasionally spouting or breeching to reveal awesome and fearful sights.

This is not the book for you if you're looking for a thriller........2006-06-07

Overall, Moby Dick was a wonderful piece of literature filled with all sorts of symbolism and artful imagery. It gave a very realistic take on things since the narrator was not really bias. Also, it is an anti-transcendentalist piece so it focuses more on reality and it examines the darker side of the human condition, so if you're looking for a story with a hero and a perfect ending then I suggest you find another book. It is difficult to describe how I really felt about Moby Dick because on one hand it was a boring read with a topic that less than interested me, but on the other hand it was fine, respectable literature that has a lot to analyze and that gives you a lot to think about. It is the kind of book that when you go back and read it again you find tons of little symbols and connections that you may have missed completely the first time around. That is what I like about the book; it gives you plenty of room to interpret these things as you will. I suggest this book if you do not get bored easily because it is sometimes hard not to when Melville starts getting off-topic and talking about things like the specific steps in whale-hunting, which he often does.

A whale of a book.......2006-05-19

Moby Dick is one of those classic books that is actually several simultaneous books rolled up into one; each a level below the other. At the most superficial level, Moby Dick is an adventure - drama about a male albino sperm while of the same name that roams the open oceans while being chased by a crew of whalers on a sailing ship named the Pequod. The ship is captained by Ahab, a man who has lost one leg in a previous encounter with the great whale. The book progresses thru various chapters. The initial and final chapters are the story itself; the chase of the whale across the oceans. The middle chapters provide a thorough and detailed examination of various facets of whales, sailing and the whaling industry.

If this book was only an adventure story on the high seas; it would probably be unknown today for it is long and quite boring with a lot of pages devoted to dialogue and description. But, at a deeper level this book is a careful study of the vast range of human emotions. The terror of the sailors facing the great whale, the agony felt by survivors of crashed boats, the vengeance that drives Ahab, the comraderie between members of the harpooning team, the rivalries between the different harpooners, the suspense of the lookouts trying to get the first glimpse of whale or land... the vast range of emotions that man can experience are experienced on the Pequoud's journey. Key to this study is the fact that the ship's crew forms Western literature's first, truly multi-racial cast of characters. Names like Queequeg, Ishmael, Starbuck, Tashtego, and Daggoo represent the various races known to white man during the time of this book's writing.

At the most basic level, this book, like all other classics in the western genre, is a commentary of human society. Here, the theme is mankind's destructive behavior, its attempts to control nature, and the ensuing wreckage that nature can bring forth onto man. Interestingly enough, the two leaders of the great quest are Ahab, an American, and Flask, an Englishman. At the time of the book's writing, America and England were in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. A visitor to the cities of either country at that time would be repulsed by the smokestacks, pollution, dirty streets, and factories. Both countries were undergoing large-scale transitions from societies that lived with nature to those that destroyed nature. The four harpooners are from native tribes in various parts of the world. As harpooners, they are the ones who will kill the whales. As an allegory, the represent the fact that in many lands, it was the natives who first showed the encroaching white man how to feed of nature's bounty. Ishael of course is Jewish. And it is the sole Jew on the boat who survives the onslaught of Moby Dick. This parallels the Bible, where the Jews are those chosen by God.

I read this book when I was in my late teens and found it quite challenging. I only finished it with the help of reading aides and study guides. I would not recommend attempting to read this unaided, for it can be quite boring and challenging.

One for the Desert Island.......2005-11-29

This is one of those books that can be the only book you will ever need. The range of characters is quite wide and it has excellent descriptive matter. I only wish it had more of the saucy and less of the salty. Otherwise I just love this book!

Cetelogical Literature.......2005-07-15

This review pertains more to this particular edition of Moby-Dick than Moby-Dick itself. The story needs no summary or introduction. It's great and I would assume that by browsing here you have already expressed interest in the book, and so you should!

However, the Modern Library Classics publication of Moby-Dick is subpar when put side by side with Penguin Classics, Oxford World Classics, or the pentultimate Norton Critical Edition. The particularly nice part of this edition is the original woodcut illustrations of Rockwell Kent. While this is certainly a nice touch, it does not help the reader as much as better explanatory notes would. Moby-Dick is a book saturated with symbolism and copious references to Biblical works. While there is a very sparce selection of explanatory notes in the back of the book, many difficult passages or more obscure references go completely unnoticed by them. The introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick is really no help at all and comes close to approaching the incoherence of rambling enthusiasm.

Much of what makes Moby-Dick the amazing work of literature that is will be missed by a casual reader if he or she selects this publication. It's a truly American novel and one of the first to come out of the American Renaissance that asserted American writers were of equal, if not better, ability with their European contemporaries. It's an experience that should not be missed, but should be experienced with a better publisher.

Moby Dick: or the Whale (Modern Library)

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Some "classics" aren't. This one is.
Slog Through It -- It's Worth It
Free SF Reader
Strange but...
Key Work of Literature

Moby Dick: or the Whale (Modern Library)
Herman Melville
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0679600108
Release Date: 1992-09-05

Book Description

"As a revelation of human destiny it is too deep even for sorrow", was how D.H. Lawrence characterized MOBY-DICK. Published in the same five-year span as The Scarlet Letter, Walden, and Leaves of Grass, this great adventure of the sea and the life of the soul is the ultimate achievement of that stunning period in American letters.

Customer Reviews:

Some "classics" aren't. This one is........2007-09-21

A few years back I made a conscious decision to read (and in some cases re-read) a number of books that fall into the category of "classics." The books that stand the test of time the best have an uncanny ability to feel modern and relevant no matter how long ago they were written. It's almost as if there is a certain current that runs down through the years that flows with a permanence that most don't. If a writer can tap into this current, their writing can be timeless; a classic.

Herman Melville tapped into that current in spades in this story. Despite this book being over 150 years old, the themes Melville selected from many obviously available to him are themes that are just as relevant an engaging today as they were in 1851. Further, Melville somehow had a handle on using language that would not seem outdated even after a century and a half.

What you get is a great story about a revenge-obsessed man, characters to whom you can easily relate and colorful descriptions of the life of a whaleman. It all comes together beautifully.

Any drawbacks? Sure, Melville's story slows in the middle of the book as he goes into a deep examination of the physical characteristics of various whales, but it's still interesting and it's just not enough to take away from the rest of this novel.

Highly recommended.

Slog Through It -- It's Worth It.......2007-09-18

This great American novel of the 19th Century, like some of the great novels of the 20th Century, is at times unreadable. Long riffs about whale biology and whale trivia made me put down this book when I tried to read it many years ago. I got through it this time, with the help of Frank Muller's classic reading on audiotape. Don't bother with anyone else's reading -- go to the library and check out Muller's version. He is one of the top readers and does justice to the poetry and great language of this novel.

The book is not told in the way we would find conventional today -- a fast paced narration of the adventures of men at sea. Melville clearly wants to tell the tale in the epic style. He writes in very short chapters that resemble Biblical passages, both in the poetic use of language and in addressing the most elemental themes of good vs. evil, man vs. nature, and the human condition. In the end, even the whale trivia serves the epic purpose in driving home the extraordinary courage and heroism of these whalers.

I don't buy the idea that Moby Dick, malevolent as he is, somehow represents evil. The sometimes destructive and overwhelming force of nature is more likely the right allegorical symbol. Evil for me is Ahab, given the truly heartless choices he makes in his obsession for the White Whale -- and given what happens to a man after 40 years at sea.

The most attractive characters are Ishmael and Queequeg, Ishmael's cannibal friend. Each demonstrates the best quailities of human nature --companionship, courage, acceptance of their lot in life. Given the racial turmoil of the 1850s, Melville may have been making a political point by portraying the nobility of the dark-skinned. I don't buy the idea that the allegory was any more elaborate than that, though it's clear to me that the novel is a gold mine for all sorts of Ph.D. thesis topics.

In the end, I do think that the great themes explored by Melville are more effectively explored less allegorically and more through character development and moral choices. For that reason, I'd say that Huckleberry Finn is the true Great American Novel of the 19th century and that the great Russian contemploraries of Melville wrote better books. But this certainly is a classic work worth the effort.

Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03

This whale hunting job really drives me crazy.

or, longer version:

Take on really stupendously big arse white wale. Add a crazed, obsessive monomaniacal Captain. Add in a couple of narrators and quite a few other unfortunates who get stuck in the middle of his quest for the white whale.

Add in an author waxing lyrical, often at length, and you are left with a pretty decent and often interesting novel.

Strange but..........2007-08-29

The strangeness is what makes Moby-Dick so exceptional and an indisputable classic. It was quite a difficult and long read, but upon completion, it was, without a doubt, completely and utterly worthwhile. The characters were some of the most unique in all of fiction and each of them is leaves their mark.

Key Work of Literature.......2007-08-27

Moby-Dick is a sprawling, unwieldy yet very great novel about the obsessive pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. "Call me Ishmael..." the famous opening lines establishes the omniscient narrator for this whale of an epic. The novel is filled with remarkable characters; their composite comradery is a true achievement of writing. Melville's insistence on explicating precise technical minutia on the craft of whaling and oceanography turned off most readers when the book was initially published (these sections still turn off most who dare penetrate this tome), yet it is really these sections that allow the reader to become immersed in the world of Ahab, the deranged symbol of evil amidst the beauty and sublime grace of the sea. Melville was an undisputed master of literary style, and this masterpiece is difficult to place for the simple reason that its' incomprehensible scale defies categorization. This is a reader's book; it is a divine allegory, a conventional adventure, and a bewitching construction all at once. Not for the weak minded.

Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan

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Great Adventure; Thrilling Moments!

Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan
Rockwell Kent
Manufacturer: Wesleyan University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0819564095

Book Description

Rockwell Kent is one of America's most famous graphic artists. He was also an avid traveler. Kent was especially fascinated by remote Arctic lands and often stayed for extended periods of time to paint, write, and become acquainted with the local inhabitants. Between 1918 and 1935, he wrote and illustrated several popular books about his travels. Voyaging, originally published in 1924, is the engaging story of Kent's sailing voyage to Tierra del Fuego. Kent is a charming writer and keen observer of both the land and its people. The book is beautifully and generously illustrated with Kent's distinctive woodcuts.

The first edition was published to great critical acclaim. New Republic wrote, "the land lives. A land where roses are as big as sun-flowers, where gales gnaw against bleak cliffs . . . At the end of the earth, there is the paradox of the dwarf and the giant." The Nation said, "Kent has caught the wild beauty of this ominous region -- iron crags ringed with the froth of blown surf, wind-tortured trees, distant peaks incrusted with dazzling snow; but out of the very heart of this bewildering beauty emanates a sense of unseen presences appallingly, implacably hostile to man."

Customer Reviews:

Great Adventure; Thrilling Moments!.......2000-04-11

Armchair adventurers who love sailing, roughing it through forests, bogs and mountains in strange lands, and meeting new people in brief encounters will love "Voyaging," by Rockwell Kent. The book begins with a shocking confession in the Introduction, and carries the reader through 184 pages of high excitement and magnificent descriptions of one of the most desolate and forsaken places in the world -- the area about Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.

The book's main characters are (1) Kent, about 40; (2) his mate, a Norwegian of 26 years who started his life by shipping to sea under his father when 14, who after a few months of beatings jumped ship, cursing as he went, apparently never to see his father again; (3) a lifeboat, which Kent bought for $20 and named Kathleen, and with a group of tradesmen modified to include cabin, mast and rigging for sails; (4) the West Wind, which whistled ceaselessly and tossed the little boat about dangerously, and (5) a menagerie of people along the way who extended hospitality, most with loving kindness, a few with malice.

A touching moment came on Bailey Island when Kent asked 20-year-old Margarita García, the name of her three-month-old suckling daughter. The baby has no name because she has not been baptized, Margarita replied. There in that inhospitable land Kent converted a dirty hovel into a cathedral and "baptized" the child, giving her his wife's name Kathleen Kent García. Kent writes that Father García, a murderer who earlier was released from a nearby prison after serving time, said "the ceremony had pleased him particularly as it was in truth the baptism of his child."

Characteristically, Kent illustrates the book well with black-and-white drawings of the stark landscape, and a few portraits of his new acquaintances. He also includes several maps by which the reader may follow the men's attempt to sail around Cape Horn -- an adventure that did not always go according to plan, as the reader will discover. -- Allen Long, Arlington, VA.

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How I Make a WoodCut
Rockwell Kent
Manufacturer: Esto Publishing Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J0XS7I

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Rockwell Kent: premier illustrator of the 1920s and 1930s

Illustrations of Rockwell Kent
Rockwell Kent
Manufacturer: Dover Publications Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486233057

Customer Reviews:

Rockwell Kent: premier illustrator of the 1920s and 1930s.......2003-04-19

My father had several Modern Library books that were illustrated by Rockwell Kent, including "Moby Dick" and "The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer." For years I have assumed that those memorable plates were wood block prints, which seemed the best explanation for Kent's masterful use of black in his work. But reading "The Illustrations of Rockwell Kent: 231 Examples from Books, Magazines and Advertising Art" I am rather stunned to learn these are ink drawings. However, this only makes them even more impressive.

Rockwell Kent was arguably the most important American book illustrator of the 1920s and 1930s, although there are some early examples from 1914 and 1915 and work from as late as 1963, including some marvelous ship drawings for "A Treasury of Sea Stories." His art was highly individualized style of formalized realism that looks glorious in black & white. This volume represents the first time that the best of his illustrations from these various sources. In addition to the aforementioned classic books there are selections from "Candide," "Salamina," "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare," and "Goethe's Faust." But the volume includes lesser-known works such as "A Basket of Poses," "Venus and Adonis," and "To Thee, America!"

Book Description

In August 1918 Rockwell Kent and his 9-year-old son settled into a primitive cabin on an island near Seward, Alaska. Kent, who during the next three decades became America's premier graphic artist, printmaker, and illustrator, was seeking time, peace, and solitude to work on his art and strengthen ties with his son. This reissue of the journal chronicling their 7-month odyssey describes what Kent called "an adventure of the spirit." He soon discovers how deeply he is "stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world" as man and boy face both the mundane and the magnificent: satisfaction in simple chores like woodchopping or baking; the appalling gloom of long and lonely winter nights; hours of silence while each works at his drawings; crystalline moonlight glancing off a frozen lake; killer whales cavorting in their bay. Richly illustrated by Kent's drawings, the journal vividly re-creates that sense of great height and space -- both external and internal -- at the same time that it celebrates a wilderness now nearly lost to us.

Customer Reviews:

Bohemian Artist.......2007-01-20

Unlike the true frontiersmen (ie; Dick Proenneke, One Man's WIlderness or James Huntington, On The Edge of Nowhere), this man is a typical anti-establishment artist who escaped to the outdoors in search of himself. His work reveals his own state of depression. It would be interesting to know what became of his son.

Ah! Peace and Quiet.......2000-01-26

You can pick this book off your library shelf any time, open it to any page, start at any paragraph and begin to feel a mantle of peace settle over your jangled nerves. "Wilderness" is the record of artist Rockwell Kent and his 9-year-old son spending a winter in Alaska on Fox Island in Resurrection Bay, near Seward, with only one elderly Swede as a neighbor. This "journal of quiet adventure" nonetheless is exciting in the relationships between father and son and old Olson and between the Kents and the harsh winter weather. Beautifuly and profusely illustrated by Rockwell and Rockwell, Jr.

Joys and difficulties of a gifted artist and son in Alaska........1999-11-03

Of the many wilderness adventures that flood our view on the television or in movies, with dramatic, life-risking events, we can become weary of the slick presentations. Rockwell Kent tells of us of another type of adventure, the day to day living on remote Fox Island off Seward, in Alaska. The small pleasures, the difficult trips in an open boat to get supplies, the child's sweetness in his friendship with a magpie, all these and more stories are told in a daily journal. And illustrated as Kent always does, with insight and style. Kent as a writer is equal to Kent as an artist, intellectual and candid in his telling a story and sharing impressions. If this is your first reading of a Kent book, you have a long list of other books ahead for this was his first book done as a "first person" storyteller. His desire for remote and wild landscapes to paint took him, and then takes us, through his work, to many other places over many decades. But none are any more delightful and majestic than this trip to Alaska. To check out the validity of this remote place, I took a trip to Fox Island several years ago, and though I didn't see it in the winter as Rockwell and his son did, it was dramatic, beautiful and matched the feeling I'd gotten when I first read the book years ago. The nice touch of this edition is that the editor, Doug Capra, has a very fine introduction to the book and Capra knows his subject. He has been researching Kent for years, but more than that, he has something to say and says it well. Few Kent editors do. But the book--it makes a wonderful Christmas gift because it has a really fine description of what a meaningful Christmas celebration can be in a remote place, shared with a hermit on the island, the father and little boy. There are some delightful details in this story: the food taken for the trip; the books for father and son; the rigerous baths when the bay freezes and the ice cold waters no longer are available. Kent is no ordinary artist, writer or father. And this is no ordinary adventure. It makes you wish, even yearn, for that place, that time, those people. I knew Rockwell Kent in the final few years of his life and he still carried that energtic view of life, that love of beauty and nature that comes alive in this small work. And three cheers to Doug Capra for bringing this new edition to life for it is of the quality for which Kent was famous in his published books. (A wretched edition of this treasure of a story was published a few years before and this edition puts to rest a Kent lover's dispair about having a bad edition of a Kent work on the shelves, any shelves. I almost never throw books away but this earlier paperback with bad design from cover to cover merits polluting a garbage pail.) So, invest in some good reading, some laughs and some wistful thoughts about what a wilderness adventure could be. And for those who have courage, still can be.

An interesting view of Alaska and the 1 year adventure of KR.......1999-03-11

I found this book to be very informative about the land and extream weather of Alaska but it ran a little dry quickly. This is a journal of around 9 months of Rockwell kents life while in Alaska. I have read other books that were written from journals and Kents does fair better then most. I can understand that a journal in Alsaka can run out of new and interesting things to write about and this book seemed to try to fill in the gaps with Kents thoughts and many philosophies. All in all I do recomend this book to anyone who really want a real veiw of what Alaska is actually like.

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Canterbury Tales in Modern English
Geoffrey Chaucer
Manufacturer: Garden City Publishing Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Product Description

Library Copy, DeLuxe Edition of Geoffrey Chaucer CANTERBURY TALES, rendered into Modern English by J. U. Nicolson with illustrations by ROCKWELL KENT and in introduction by Gordon Hall Gerould. DeLuxe Edition. Copyright 1934 by Covici, Friede, Inc. Typography by Robert Josephy. CL. Groups A - I.

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great
reads like a song
Possibly my all-time favorite book!
Classic adventure travel

N by E
Rockwell Kent , and Edward Hoagland
Manufacturer: Wesleyan University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0819552925

Book Description

When artist, illustrator, writer, and adventurer Rockwell Kent first published N by E in a limited edition in 1930, his account of a voyage on a 33-foot cutter from New York Harbor to the rugged shores of Greenland quickly became a collectors' item. Little wonder, for readers are immediately drawn to Kent's vivid descriptions of the experience; we share "the feeling of wind and wet and cold, of lifting seas and steep descents, of rolling over as the wind gusts hit," and the sound "of wind in the shrouds, of hard spray flung on a drum-tight canvas, of rushing water at the scuppers, of the gale shearing a tormented sea."

When the ship sinks in a storm-swept fjord within 50 miles of its destination, the story turns to the stranding and subsequent rescue of the three-man crew, salvage of the vessel, and life among native Greenlanders. Magnificently illustrated by Kent's wood-block prints and narrated in his poetic and highly entertaining style, this tale of the perils of killer nor'easters, treacherous icebergs, and impenetrable fog -- and the joys of sperm whales breaching or dawn unmasking a longed-for landfall -- is a rare treat for old salts and landlubbers alike.

Customer Reviews:

great.......1999-03-13

please get in touch with me, I have a book that I have had for twenty some odd years I know that after researching Rockwell Kent that someone can give me a historical and monetary value, it was edited by Rockell Kent in 1939, it has the most beutiful paintings from world famous painters. Hence the title World famous Paintings.

reads like a song.......1998-12-05

North by East is truly one of the greatest sailing books I have ever read. High adventure through the eyes of a true poet and artist.

Possibly my all-time favorite book!.......1998-07-18

A glorious story of adventure when Kent and two friends sailed on a private schooner from Labrador and Newfoundland to Greenland. We are carried along through deep fogs, icebergs, storms and calms until the men are shipwrecked in a violent storm on Greenland's rocky shore. The story also presents an absorbing and tender tale of the relationships of Kent with the people of Newfoundland, his two shipmates and the Stone Age Eskimos of Greenland -- who threw him a highly successful party in spite of the language barrier. Kent illustrated the text with over 100 magnificent sketches and woodblock drawings that in themselves are worth the price.

Classic adventure travel.......1997-10-08

Rockwell Kent is arrogant, verbose, and totally charming. N by E is his account of a near-disastrous sailing trip to Greenland via Labrador and the Davis Strait, undertaken in the late 1920's. His beautiful woodcuts illustrate nearly every other page, and Kent's mix of intelligence, enthusiasm, and attitude are the perfect complement to his art.

Distant Shores: The Odyssey of Rockwell Kent

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Ladies,Gentlemen,Fellow Rockwell Kent nuts!

Distant Shores: The Odyssey of Rockwell Kent
Constance Martin
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520227123

Book Description

Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) was an artist of extraordinary drive, talent, and versatility; he embraced life with exuberance. And though he was one of the most popular American illustrators of this century--so much so that The New Yorker published the ditty, "That day will mark a precedent, which brings no news of Rockwell Kent"--the controversies engendered by his socialist leanings, particularly during the McCarthy era in the 1950s, frequently overshadowed his artistic achievements. His major art was inspired by his extended stays in remote, sparsely inhabited and climatically harsh regions, most of them islands, to which his imagination was drawn for a mythic association with the mystical and marvelous.
Distant Shores captures Kent's great enthusiasm for the sea and mountains, and the relationship between nature and humanity. Produced to accompany a traveling exhibition of the artist's work, this handsome volume features eighty paintings, prints, and drawings, (more than fifty in full color) related to Kent's sojourns in the wilderness--Maine, Newfoundland, Alaska, Tierra del Fuego, and Greenland. Included in this collection are works from The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg that have been unavailable to the public since the early 1960s. Kent's dramatic black-and-white illustrations for Herman Melville's Moby Dick--the engravings that popularized his work in the United States--are also featured.
The essays describe Kent's career as a painter, printmaker, book designer, illustrator, and prolific writer. Constance Martin contextualizes the work in the exhibition by providing an informative and insightful background of Kent's life and art. Richard West contributes fascinating details about Kent's childhood and early adult life, his mastery of the print medium, and his involvement with American political thought during the McCarthy period.

Customer Reviews:

Ladies,Gentlemen,Fellow Rockwell Kent nuts!.......2003-06-22

This effort may not appeal to everyone...certainly not as a coffee table book....but for those of us who follow Kent, his writings, his art and his life story, it is a commendable compliment to the study of his art. This book drove me nuts, so much so that I travelled to Greenland to see the Arctic light and shadows for myself. Kent captured the light and images of a unique land and this book provides a worthwhile reference to many of his Greenland landscapes. I sure would like to see one of his original landscapes hanging on my wall at home:-)

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