A picture of dread...
Rockwell Kent' s 1915 painting titled "House of Dread". On display at the Plattsburgh State Art Museum. The ghostly white house is the Kent Cottage at Brigus, Newfoundland. The grieving figures are Rockwell and his wife. She with the Munch-like orange hair, he faltering on a patch of cadmium yellow. Looming beneath and beyond the house is the vast ultramarine sea interpreted as a silent, all consuming graveyard. From Kent's journal: "Upon this bleak and lofty cliff's edge, land's end, stands a house; against it's corner and facing seaward leans a man, naked even as the land, and sea and house; his head is bowed as though in utter dejection; and from a window leans a weeping woman. It is our cliff, our sea, our house stripped bear and stark, it's loneliness intensified. It is ourselves in Newfoundland, our hidden and prevailing misery revealed".
To understand his angst, consider this. This young and aspiring artist moved his young family from NY City to remote Brigus Newfoundland, to paint the stark landscape and hopefully establish an art school. Soon thereafter, World War I would erupt. Due to his pro-Germain and anti-war beliefs, he was looked upon by the locals as a German spy and this would lead to his deportation in 1915.
A picture of dread...
Rockwell Kent' s 1915 painting titled "House of Dread". On display at the Plattsburgh State Art Museum. The ghostly white house is the Kent Cottage at Brigus, Newfoundland. The grieving figures are Rockwell and his wife. She with the Munch-like orange hair, he faltering on a patch of cadmium yellow. Looming beneath and beyond the house is the vast ultramarine sea interpreted as a silent, all consuming graveyard. From Kent's journal: "Upon this bleak and lofty cliff's edge, land's end, stands a house; against it's corner and facing seaward leans a man, naked even as the land, and sea and house; his head is bowed as though in utter dejection; and from a window leans a weeping woman. It is our cliff, our sea, our house stripped bear and stark, it's loneliness intensified. It is ourselves in Newfoundland, our hidden and prevailing misery revealed".
To understand his angst, consider this. This young and aspiring artist moved his young family from NY City to remote Brigus Newfoundland, to paint the stark landscape and hopefully establish an art school. Soon thereafter, World War I would erupt. Due to his pro-Germain and anti-war beliefs, he was looked upon by the locals as a German spy and this would lead to his deportation in 1915.