The 'Wild World' of the painter Rockwell Kent

BBC Northern Ireland has an interesting piece here on the American artist Rockwell Kent and the time he spent in Ireland (Donegal) in the mid 1920s

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-44534911

Kent was one of a group of socialists and intellectuals who were involved with the American Socialist movement in the early twentieth century.

Kent denied any links to Communism however he was a friend of the great American Socialist Leader and founder of the International Workers of the World (IWW) Eugene Debs.

Additionally on his death a large proportion of Kent’s paintings were gifted to the (then) Soviet Union. He was a recipient of the International Lenin Peace Prize.

Kent was himself a member of the IWW briefly but possibly left it when the movement, perhaps the most radical Union movement of all time, was brutally crushed by the US government and its founder Eugene Debs jailed (although subsequently he was released by Presidential dispensation). Kent was however also a member of the American Federation of Labour and it and the IWW did not it always ‘sit comfortably’ with each other. It probably indicates the complexity of his political leanings

The Rockwell Kent period in Ireland is interesting because although I knew of him I had not realised the strong affinity that the author of the piece says he had to Ireland and the Western area part of the Gaeltacht. Certainly it gets scarcely a mention in his Wikipedia entry. He painted wild (wilderness) landscapes and so I suppose the West Atlantic coast would have been a natural draw.

Image: The Donegal painting ‘Annie McGinley’

Bernard Moffatt