When Rockwell Kent died in 1971, the New York Times published an extensive front-page obituary that commenced: "At various (and frequently simultaneous) periods of his long life the protean Rockwell Kent was an architect, painter, illustrator, lithographer, xylographer, cartoonist, advertising artist, carpenter, dairy farmer, explorer, trade union leader, and political controversialist." Rockwell Kent (June 21, 1882 – March 13, 1971) was also a writer, sailor, adventurer and voyager. Kent was born in Tarrytown, New York. He lived much of his early life in and around New York City, where he studied with several influential painters and theorists of his day. In 1905 Kent ventured to Monhegan Island, Maine, and found its rugged and primordial beauty a source of inspiration for the next five years. His first series of paintings of Monhegan were shown to wide critical acclaim in 1907 in New York. These works form the foundation of his lasting reputation as an early American modernist, and can be seen in museums across the country. A transcendentalist and mystic in the tradition of Thoreau and Emerson, whose works he read, Kent found inspiration in the austerity and stark beauty of wilderness. After Monhegan, he lived for extended periods of time in Winona, Minnesota (1912–1913), Newfoundland (1914–15), Alaska (1918–19), Vermont (1919–1925), Tierra del Fuego, 1922–23), Ireland (1926), and Greenland (1929; 1931–32; 1934–35). His series of land and seascapes from these often forbidding locales convey the Symbolist spirit evoking the mysteries and cosmic wonders of the natural world. "I don't want petty self-expression", Kent wrote, "I want the elemental, infinite thing; I want to paint the rhythm of eternity."In the late summer of 1918, Kent and his nine-year-old son ventured to the American frontier of Alaska. Wilderness (1920), the first of Kent's several adventure memoirs, is an edited and illustrated compilation of his letters home. The New Statesman (London) described Wilderness as "easily the most remarkable book to come out of America since Leaves of Grass was published."In 1927, Kent moved to upstate New York where he had acquired an Adirondack farmstead. It was his residence for the remainder of his life, and from his studio there he worked tirelessly on countless painting and drawing assignments. In the summer of 1929, Kent sailed on a painting expedition to Greenland, and his adventures (and misadventures) are recounted in the best-selling N by E (1930). After meeting Danish Arctic explorers on this trip, Kent became determined to return to Greenland to paint and write. He spent two years (1931–32 and 1934–35) above the Arctic Circle in a tiny fishing settlement, where he conceived some of the largest and most celebrated paintings of his career. When an anthology of Kent's work was published in 1982, a reviewer of the book for the New York Times further described Kent as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States." Retrospectives of the artist's paintings and drawings to mark important points in his career have been mounted by museums throughout the USA and Canada. His paintings and prints are in the collections of national and regional museums across the USA.