Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) American, Print. Titled, Lower left: “How Soon” The viewer stares upon a figure who is perched half upon a large boulder. The man stares up in fear at the night sky toward some unseen, terrifying force. Size: 18 1/2 x 15 1/2 in. #4801 Rockwell Kent was born in Tarrytown, New York in 1882. From 1900-1903, he joined William Merritt Chase's classes at Shinnecock and then entered the New York School of Art studying with Robert Henri and becoming close friends with George Bellows and Edward Hopper. His subject matter is wide-ranging including scenes of Maine's Monhegan Island, the Adirondack Mountains, book illustrations, and commercial art renderings for companies including General Electric, Rolls Royce, and Westinghouse. Although his first love was painting, in addition to illustration, he also did fabric, ceramic, and jewelry designs, and spent time as a dairy farmer, carpenter, home builder, and lobster fisherman. He was an inveterate traveler whose wanderlust created subjects from a wide variety of locations and which caused him to be literally the starving artist, dependent upon outside sources for money. One of his supporters was Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. who for nine years gave Kent $300. a month in exchange for first selection of two paintings a year. Much influenced in Ireland by Thayer, Kent's artistic focus became landscape painting and the relationship between nature and humanity. He spent much time on Monhegan Island in Maine, a place he first visited in 1905 at the suggestion of Robert Henri. Although Kent stayed only until 1910, the place became closely associated with his name. Between 1915 and 1935, he visited Newfoundland, Alaska, Tierro del Fuego, France, Ireland, and Greenland. He also wrote designed, and illustrated a number of travelogs. In 1927, after his marriage to Frances Lee, he settled into a parcel of farmland near Ausable Forks, New York, where he built a studio and felt at home for the first time during his painting career. There he and his wife hosted numerous gatherings of prominent New York people including the Pulitzers, Putnams, and Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and John Dos Passos. In 1907, his first exhibition was held in New York, and he also exhibited with George Bellows and John Steuart Curry and members of The Eight before 1920. From 1918, he did numerous wood engravings and lithographs, and he left eighty-six paintings and hundreds of drawings, now scattered among museums. In Fall, 1998, the Monhegan Museum held a retrospective of his oil and ink paintings. His 1930 illustrations for Moby Dick are among his most lasting achievements. He was the first American artist to have work exhibited in the Soviet Union, a reflection of his Communist Party sympathies, which earned him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1967. This espousal of radical politics caused his career to suffer badly in the '50s because his leftist views caused him disdain among many Americans. However, his work, reflecting both realism and modernism, has earned increasing attention from American art historians.