Rockwell Kent

When the publishing firm Random House commissioned Rockwell Kent to draw illustrations for an edition of Voltaire’s Candide in 1927, Kent was already an established painter and illustrator to fashionable magazines such as Vanity Fair. This sketch was a design for a drawing of a Paquette, a servant-girl-turned-prostitute who imposes her story of misfortune upon the protagonist of Voltaire’s satiric novel Candide, 1759. The drawing is captioned “…obliged to continue the abominable occupation….” The corresponding illustration did not, however, appear in the 1928 edition of the book, but only in the 1959 re-publication of the story. It was one of four full-page illustrations highlighted with the umber brown colors with which Kent experimented on the left of his drawing.

Rockwell Kent belongs to a second generation of artists who came to Dublin. Apprenticed to Abbot Thayer, Kent arrived in Dublin towards the end of a long artistic training, first under William Merritt Chase and then Robert Henri. In the process, he worked as an architectural draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, painter, ship's carpenter, and dairy farmer. During a long career, he worked in Maine, Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and the Adirondacks. Only a few paintings of Dublin by Kent are known.

These two drawings suggest the breadth of Kent's artistic interests. Little is known of his designs for modem cutlery, or whether this flatware pattern was ever produced. The watercolor drawings have been recently identified as a study for an illustration for a 1959 edition of Candide, the satirical tale first published by Voltaire in 1759.