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by Constance Martin.
Chameleon Books, Chesterfield, MA, U.S.A., and University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A., in association with the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA, U.S.A., 2000.
ISBN 0-520-22712-3.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Ballast Quarterly Review, 2022 X Avenue,
Dysart, IA 52224-9767 U.S.A. E-mail: ballast@netins.net.

This is the catalog for an exhibition of 80 paintings, prints and drawings by Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), the American artist and writer whose stark, dramatic drawings for the 1930 edition of Moby Dick brought him fame as a book illustrator. Kent was a student of William Merrit Chase, Robert Henri and Abbott H. Thayer (who was a naturalist as well as a painter), and a friend and classmate of George Bellows and Edward Hopper. This is not a study of Kent's illustrations, but of unsung, less important views of natural settings that came from his extended visits to remote wilderness areas in Maine, Alaska, Newfoundland, Greenland, and Tierra del Fuego. Despite his popularity, Kent's reputation plummeted in 1953 when he was ordered by Senator Joseph McCarthy to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he was accused of leftist leanings. While he denied being a Communist, in response to the subsequent seizure of his passport, he gave a large collection of his paintings, illustrations and manuscripts to the people of the Soviet Union. It is surprising yet partly appropriate that this traveling exhibition should originate at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., because, however separate their styles and the politics of their followers, these two artists named Rockwell admired each other's work and were often mistaken for one another by the public.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, Autumn 2000.)