.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Situated ten miles off the coast of Maine, Monhegan Island is renowned for its sublime geography and has attracted a community of artists since the 1850s. In 1905, on Rockwell Kent’s first trip to the island, he wrote of his initial impressions of Monhegan to his teacher Robert Henri, “This place is more wonderful & beautiful than you told me it was. I’ve been here almost three weeks and haven’t gotten over my amazement yet. It seems to me now that I’d like to paint here always. I could sit all day in some of those holes under the headlands, watching the water & scared to death.” (July 12, 1905, as quoted in J.M. Wien, Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern, Portland, Maine, 2005, p. 29) Indeed, Kent returned to Monhegan many times over the span of his long career and created a powerful body of works depicting the sea and rocky headlands, including Maine Headland, Evening.
According to Scott Ferris, "Kent painted this eastern view, the cliff side, of Monhegan on several occasions. Examples include Headlands and Sea and Blackhead, Monhegan (both, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine), and Brewing Storm, Monhegan (The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia). By returning to this site over time, he was able to capture the varying atmospheric and physical conditions of a given moment.
“By the 1950s the artist had perfected his later technique of painting. Instead of rigorously applying a dark pigment to the base of his composition and then creating his light on the painting's surface, he applied a smooth base layer of light pigment, over which he thinly painted his composition: thus allowing the light to emanate from within. Gone is the noticeable pentimento and impasto that is evident in Kent's early Monhegan paintings. In later works, such as Maine Headland, Evening, we now see a lighter and tighter composition." (unpublished letter, September 21, 2015)
Maine Headland, Evening was in the collection of J.J. Ryan (1913-1970), a grandson of Wall Street financier Thomas Fortune Ryan (1851-1928), who by the time the present work was painted, was a friend and key patron of Kent. During this same period in the 1950s, Kent had been accused in Senator Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt for communists, though the artist insisted he never belonged to the Communist party. Ryan continued to support Kent through his patronage of the artist’s work, and even offered one of his own planes if the artist needed to leave the country. Ultimately, after the State Department confiscated Kent’s passport, Kent settled the matter by taking his case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor and returned his passport. Ryan, undeterred by the controversy, primarily purchased Kent's works through Macbeth Gallery through the mid-1960s.
According to Scott Ferris, "Kent painted this eastern view, the cliff side, of Monhegan on several occasions. Examples include Headlands and Sea and Blackhead, Monhegan (both, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine), and Brewing Storm, Monhegan (The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia). By returning to this site over time, he was able to capture the varying atmospheric and physical conditions of a given moment.
“By the 1950s the artist had perfected his later technique of painting. Instead of rigorously applying a dark pigment to the base of his composition and then creating his light on the painting's surface, he applied a smooth base layer of light pigment, over which he thinly painted his composition: thus allowing the light to emanate from within. Gone is the noticeable pentimento and impasto that is evident in Kent's early Monhegan paintings. In later works, such as Maine Headland, Evening, we now see a lighter and tighter composition." (unpublished letter, September 21, 2015)
Maine Headland, Evening was in the collection of J.J. Ryan (1913-1970), a grandson of Wall Street financier Thomas Fortune Ryan (1851-1928), who by the time the present work was painted, was a friend and key patron of Kent. During this same period in the 1950s, Kent had been accused in Senator Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt for communists, though the artist insisted he never belonged to the Communist party. Ryan continued to support Kent through his patronage of the artist’s work, and even offered one of his own planes if the artist needed to leave the country. Ultimately, after the State Department confiscated Kent’s passport, Kent settled the matter by taking his case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor and returned his passport. Ryan, undeterred by the controversy, primarily purchased Kent's works through Macbeth Gallery through the mid-1960s.