Ever tried capturing a sunset in a photo and felt it just didn't do it justice? That's the challenge Rockwell Kent faced when he set out to paint the breathtaking beauty of Greenland. In 1935, he famously wrote, "God must forgive me, that I tried to paint it." It's a sentiment many artists, photographers, and anyone who has witnessed a stunning vista can understand.
But what drove Kent to try, even knowing the limitations? Let's dive in.
Kent wasn't deterred. He painted Greenland "incessantly," as he put it. He wrote extensively about its beauty, its people, and the profound hold it had over him. In a world of constant digital distractions – and yes, we're asking you to look at a screen to read this – there's something incredibly alluring about the scene he captured:
- A man,
- His dogs,
- And his paints,
- Humbled by a monumental iceberg.
Yet, even this wasn't enough. In 1934, Kent was feeling the very distractions he sought to escape.
"Because modern American life irks him, Rockwell Kent, artist, left New York yesterday on the liner Deutschland on a trip to Greenland," reported The New York Times. "To get away from the annoyances of New York life, automobiles, radios, cocktail parties and such is a wonderful experience in itself," he said.
Kent, a true Renaissance man – a painter, writer, political activist, and book illustrator – made three trips to Greenland between 1929 and 1935. His first trip ended in a shipwreck, costing him many of his painting supplies. But that didn't stop him. He built a house, lived among the locals, and immersed himself in the community, hunting, writing, exploring, and, most importantly, painting.
He transformed his nine-foot-long sledge into a mobile studio, mounting his canvas to create an easel. He would gather his dogs in a fan formation and drive them out into the landscape, ready to paint.
"I’d halt my dogs, swing the sledge into precisely the position that I wanted it, lay out my paints and brushes, get to work," he wrote.
And that's the scene we find in his work: an artist at work. The striking diagonal of the iceberg is echoed in the shapes of the dogs, creating a visual rhythm. Slanted lines run throughout the landscape, drawing the eye.
Take a moment to appreciate the mountain peeking around the corner. Virginia Anderson, a senior curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art, points out how the dark brown underpainting with blue streaks creates the relief of the cliff surface. Up close, it appears abstract, but as you pull back, it resolves into a realistic depiction of how light flows across the surface. "He really nailed it," she says.
The gradient above the dark spot glows as the electric teal sky dissolves into a warm yellow. At the center, the bold top face of the iceberg soaks up the sun in a warm white-yellow. These highlights connect across the canvas, each one different – some warmer, some cooler, all reacting to the light.
"The beauty of those northern winter days is more remote and passionless, more nearly absolute than any other beauty I know," Kent wrote.
Inspired by Kent's journeys, photographer Denis Defibaugh has documented the people and the landscape of Greenland. He says, "You get such pure color there because there’s no pollution. There’s nothing changing the light and the sky except reality." In the fall of 2016, he captured a similar sky.
This simple world of blue sky, white snow, and brown mountains becomes anything but. Look again at the colors Kent used on the side of the iceberg. Warm oranges clash against cool blues, purples dance with greens. (Remember Monet and the color wheel?) Our artist is trying to capture it all, mixing dabs of red, blue, and yellow.
To combat the freezing temperatures, Kent painted in down-stuffed mittens with a hole for his brush.
But here's where it gets controversial...
There's a twist in this story: The painting we're looking at, "Artist in Greenland," was painted by Kent in 1960, when he was warm and back in America. It's a copy of a 1935 work called "Iceberg," which he painted in Greenland.
This earlier painting shows the iceberg (and the dogs) as seen through the artist’s eyes. It hung in the Kents’ home bar. Some friends wanted to buy “Iceberg,” but it was already promised to another collection, so Kent copied it for them – with some changes, according to Scott Ferris, a specialist in the art of Rockwell Kent.
He had already painted himself into the scene before, in a work from 1929 also called “Artist in Greenland.” So it wasn’t a leap for him to introduce the theme of the artist at work into his “Iceberg,” creating another self-portrait, according to Mr. Ferris.
“Except for the dogs and me in the foreground of your picture,” Kent wrote in a letter to his friends, “I would find it quite impossible to detect the difference between the original and the copy.”
“He’s such a master at painting that he can just duplicate them,” Mr. Ferris said.
Kent was nearly 80 years old when he painted this copy. It had been 25 years since he painted “Iceberg” and 25 years since he had been to Greenland, but he was able to put himself there again, back on the snow, just a man, his dogs, and his paints.
What do you think about the fact that the painting was created years later? Does it diminish the impact of the artwork, or does it show the enduring power of Kent's memory and skill? Share your thoughts in the comments!
