Beschreibung:

Rockwell Kent American, 1882-1971 Salmon Waters, Ireland Signed and dated Rockwell Kent 1926-7 (lr); titled "Salmon Waters" - Ireland on a label from The Print Room, Los Angeles; titled Salmon Waters (Ireland) and numbered 32 on a second label, both on the reverse Oil on panel 16 x 20 inches Exhibited: New York, Wildenstein and Company, Paintings by Rockwell Kent Apr. 14-May 7, 1927 Paintings by Rockwell Kent a traveling exhibition circulating from 1928-Dec. 1929 During the summer of 1926, following Rockwell Kent's marriage to Frances Lee, the newlyweds stayed in Ireland for a period of four months. They settled in western County Donegal where the artist found ample material for his next portfolio of oil paintings, watercolors and drawings. The Kents imbibed the lore and life of the countryside. Legend had it that the Royal Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie had hidden in the valley, in the very house that Kent had reclaimed from ruin; and they lived by simple means, drank poteen (moonshine) brewed in a neighbor's still, and shared stories, played music, and danced. As Kent wrote in his book, This Is My Own (Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940): "... western Donegal -- its hills and mountains, its olive moorlands, its cadmium and emerald fields, its white-walled villages, its lakes and streams, its coves, bays, sandy beaches, headlands, its capes and peninsulas -- all western Donegal blond in the sunlight and in full relief again the dark blue ocean plain. Gee, it was beautiful! And ours -- just let us choose the spot -- to go to live in." Within months of Kent's return home, Weyhe Galleries, in New York, offered a selection of the artist's watercolors of Ireland; and in April of 1927, thirty-six of Kent's Irish landscape paintings were displayed by Wildenstein & Company. Seventeen of these canvases, including Salmon Waters, toured extensively throughout western and southern United States during 1928 and 1929. Among the numerous institutions included in the tour were: The East-West Gallery of Fine Arts in San Francisco, Los Angeles Museum Exposition Park, Oakland (CA) Art Gallery, Joslyn Museum of Art (Omaha, NE), Dallas Art Association, Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, and the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art (New Orleans) which completed the tour in December of 1929. The New York World [Apr. 26, 1927] stated that "Mr. Kent learned in Ireland, perhaps better than anywhere else, how to fuse life through the sombre crusts of rocks, how to translate shadows into lambent action and how to merge the hues of water into a composite sheen which few have the skill to produce." And the Houston Post Dispatch [Aug. 4, 1929] reported: "Seldom do we see a painter so free from the attempt to create art out of art -- rather art out of life. The breadth and dignity of the Rockwell Kent show sends you away from the museum feeling splendidly alive." And, "His use of relative color values is like a symphony, his sense of design sure and unobtrusive and his ability to construct is as sure as the earth." "Faultless in composition, design and pattern-daring yet truthful in color play, these paintings are built up with great solidity." From the monthly journal of art, The Argus, in San Francisco [Sep. 1928]: "A first contact with these powerful paintings can hardly be described as an exciting or a thrilling experience. The reaction is of a different nature. When for the first time you come upon the rim of the Grand Canyon, you neither smile, nor laugh; you do not feel exhilarated or transported with an exuberant enthusiasm. You stand before this grand scene of nature practically breathless, not quite happy, not quite satisfied at the feeling that all these impressive masses are so masterfully organized that there seems to be some conscious planning back of them." And in a World Herald (Omaha, NE, May 19, 1929) review of the exhibition while it was on display at the Joslyn Museum of Art, the author stated: "It is an achievement to evolve a structure that in its subje
Scattered touches of inpaint, including several fine strokes at the extreme upper left corner, two discrete areas at in the lower left quadrant, and along a fine superficial 7 inch diagonal scratch at upper center.