Fruit carrier, Bali 1927 Nieuwenkamp was born on July 27th 1874 in Amsterdam. His father owned sailing ships sailing to Indonesia and hearing the stories of the returning captains evoked in the young Nieuwenkamp an obsession for distant lands and adventure. After a failed attempt by his father to have his son make a career in his business, Nieuwenkamp attended the Academy for Decorative Art in Amsterdam. However, he left within one year to go his own way.
Entrance to a house in Denpasar, Bali, 1937
He was an autodidact and a great experimenter with new techniques, particularly in the art of etching. Nieuwenkamp was a very focused man with the discipline of a scientist tempered by the sensitivity of an artist, a lust for adventure, a natural appreciation for ethnic arts and an enormous ambition to tread new paths.
Wobbly bridge, Tabanan, Bali, 1937
In 1898 he visited Indonesia for the first time and on his second visit in 1903-1904 he went on to Bali and became the first foreign artist to love Bali and the Balinese with a passion. Having secured agreements with several museums in the Netherlands to obtain Balinese art and objects for their collections, Nieuwenkamp immediately started to purchase and order a wide range of ethnographic art and objects from local artists and craftsmen.
Besakih Temple, Karagasem 1918
Through his drawings and books, he gave an excellent impression of Balinese art and culture at that time. Since 1854 Northern Bali was under Dutch rule but Southern Bali in 1904, when Nieuwenkamp visited it, was still independent. Nieuwenkamp would be one of the last Westerners to experience a glorious medieval society in its final days. During his second visit to Bali in 1906 the Dutch decided to end the independence of South Bali and Nieuwenkamp was invited by the Governor-General van Heutz to accompany the Dutch invasion force. By contemporary European standards, the Balinese were barbarous and primitive, particularly with widows throwing themselves in the flames of the funeral pyre of their deceased husbands. But Nieuwenkamp was a singular man who saw in their society the beauty and soul that had been lost in his own.
Graveyard with in the background the Borobudur, 1937
Barong, Ubud en Tabanan Bali 1906
Fruit carrier, Bali 1927
Four outrigger proa’s on the beach of Kusambe, Bali, 1937
Fruit carrier, Bali 1927
Young boy at Loemboeng, 1918
Houses in Matoer, Sumatra, 1925
Temple of Besakih, Karangasem, Bali circa 1907
On September 20th, 1906, Denpasar, the capital of South Bali fell to the Dutch military forces. Official military briefings praised the victory which was reported with nationalistic pride on the front pages of all Dutch newspapers. As Nieuwenkamp had witnessed, the truth was far from glorious. As if in a trance the Balinese, men women and children, dressed in their finest silks and jewellery and armed with ancient bejewelled krises, the Raja himself mounted atop a golden palanquin, rushed forward, the men killing their wives and children and the Dutch machine gun fire doing the rest. The once-powerful and magnificent court of Denpasar was left in ashes and as many as two thousand Balinese dead. The Dutch suffered four dead.
Market under the Banyan tree, 1937
Ida Bagoes Raki, Bali 1906
Nieuwenkamp made drawings and saved as many beautiful architectural elements and artefacts from the rubble as he could, most of it now in the collection of the Ethnological Museum in Leiden.
Statue of Vishnu Garuda, Bali, 1904
Fruit carriers, Bali 1927 Besakih
A Buginese boat, Semarang 1898
Wadah, Bali 1906
Forest in Den Pasar, 1937 (a Sema or pyre place near Den Pasar. In the background a pyre is burning)
Illustration by Rockwell Kent for N by E, 1930, his account of a voyage on a 33-foot cutter from New York Harbor to the rugged shores of Greenland
Rockwell Kent, Moonlight in the Adirandacks, date unknown
Rockwell Kent, Dan Ward's Stack, Ireland
Rockwell Kent, The View from Asgaard
Rockwell Kent's paintings feel uplifting to me, like time spent walking on the beach, looking out at the sea and the sky. They're boldly contemplative, a clean but also sophisticated, intelligent simplicity to them. There is something austere about them too, a spiritual starkness. His prints have an art deco edge. His snowy mountain paintings remind me of Nicholas Roerich. Something about the boldness of his landscapes remind me a bit of Thomas Hart Benton. After a lifetime traveling the world, surviving World War II, his political interests leaned toward socialist ideas. He became targeted and scapegoated by that monster, Senator Joseph McCarthy, in the 1950s. That destroyed not only his career, his livelihood, but estranged him from neighbors he cared about and had spent much time with in Maine, where he'd built his home. In 1947 Kent’s mother died at the age of 91, leaving each of her children $30,000. Kent invested most of his inheritance in hopes of building a hedge against his plummeting income.
With the rest, the artist returned with his wife, Sally, to Monhegan Island, Maine, the scene of his earliest triumphs and transgressions.
“My body has grown old. I walk now where I used to run; step carefully where once I’d leap. But still, my eyes are good. And seeing, must I not respond to nature’s beauty? I began to paint again, with undiminished love for the familiar scenes.”
“I lug my canvasses across the gullies, up the headlands. I relive my youth. Or better I am young again.”
But fallout from Kent’s clash with U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy was immediate. Kent’s politics were never a secret to the islanders, but now the symptoms were instantly apparent: avoidance on the footpaths, hurried departures from the general store whenever the Kents came in. Unable to find sanctuary even on Monhegan, Kent and Sally soon left, never to return.
The Adirondack Mountains that cradle Asgaard still inspired the aging artist, but his paintings were accumulating in his studio, most unseen by anyone except Sally.
In 1960 Kent arranged to give eighty canvases and eight hundred drawings and prints, work that covered every phase of his career, to the Soviet Union, “the one people in the world who have demonstrated their high regard for what I do.” About Rockwell Kent.
Rockwell Kent was an American painter and illustrator born in 1882 in Tarrytown, New York. He was a highly prolific print maker. Kent painted landscapes of New York, Alaska, Vermont, and Minnesota. He was also an author of a number of books, which he illustrated.
He was most renowned for his illustrations for Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
He was commissioned by the United States government to paint murals on new buildings. Sometimes he would sneak in his own comments and ideas on their work in tiny letters or in Inuit syllables writing.
Kent illustrated several magazines and had many cover issues to his credit.
For his artistic education Kent studied at the Art Students League of New York City and also with private classes at ateliers. Some instructors include William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri.
> Rockwell Kent became increasingly radical and outspoken during World War II. After the war he advocated friendship and peace with the Soviet Union. U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy targeted him during the red-baiting era, and his reputation suffered. Once one of the most famous, well-paid artists of his day, he was no longer in demand as an artist or illustrator.
Rockwell Kent at home, playing piano with a silly glasses and nose mask.
Rockwell Kent, Resurrection Bay, Alaska, 1965
Rockwell Kent, Greenlanders, 1932
Rockwell Kent, Cloudy Day. Fjord in Northern Greenland
Rockwell Kent, May, North Greenland, 1935 -1937
Rockwell Kent, Whiteface Sunset
Rockwell Kent, Asgaard Jerseys, 1965
Rockwell Kent, The Trapper, 1921
Rockwell Kent, America Land of Our Fathers, 1956-59
America, Land of Our Fathers was painted during the period when Senator Joseph McCarthy, suspicious of Kent's socialist leanings, had summoned the artist to trial. Kent portrays a quiet farmhouse nestled in the undulating Virginia hills south of Charlottesville, the light of day radiating. The bucolic scene alludes to eighteenth century Jeffersonian ideals of pride, patriotism, and freedom. The luminous palette, contrasting colors, and tight, spare composition are characteristic of the artist's work of the 1950s.
Rockwell Kent, Landscape, 1933
Rockwell Kent, Alpes
Rockwell Kent, Sun, Tomorrow, Monhegan, 1907
Rockwell Kent, Asgaard's Meadow
Rockwell Kent, Moonlight Sleigh Ride, December 1st, 1943
