Rockwell Kent - Sacco and Vanzetti

When Sacco and Vanzetti was valued in 1997, William Wartmann, a senior member of the American Society of Appraisers, said “Rockwell Kent’s oil painting on wooden panel serves as the most important graphic example by the most highly-regarded American artist known to have actively issued a response [to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti]”.1 Rockwell Kent painted Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, almost immediately after Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Massachusetts. Although William Wartmann praised this piece as “the most important and graphic example” of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, it is largely unrecognized in Kent’s large collection of works, if not also unknown to the world at large.

In an article about the donation of Sacco and Vanzetti, Ellen Perlo, who knew Kent, said that she had never seen reproductions of this work.2 This begs the question: if Sacco and Vanzetti is such a significant, historical piece of American art, why isn’t it discussed in the literature about Rockwell Kent? Kent’s political ideology is well known and discussed; if this painting falls into the category of Kent’s political affiliations, why isn’t it a part of the conversation? Although Sacco and Vanzetti arose out of a singular historical event, it belongs to a broader, more significant relationship between Kent’s art and socialist political ideology.

In 1920, Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco were convicted of murder. The two were anarchists and Italian immigrants that were suspected of killing two men in an armed robbery despite conflicting evidence. The Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and sentenced quickly; a number of appeals were subsequently filed and news of the case spread across the world. The appeals, however, were unsuccessful. People from around the world reacted strongly to this case, and claimed that the two men were executed in an increasingly anti-immigrant political atmosphere. Letters were written, petitions were filed, and works of art were made.3 One of the most noteworthy graphic portrayals was Ben Shahn’s depiction of Sacco and Vanzetti in coffins.4 The notoriety of this specific work speaks to the strong reaction that the public had towards the case and provides some context for Kent’s graphic depiction of Sacco and Vanzetti.

The day that Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, Kent sent a letter to Mrs. Walter H. Siple canceling his plans to show his works at the Worcester Museum in Massachusetts. Kent declared that he was “determined to have no relations of any public nature with that State, or with any community or organization of it.” He went on to write that he held the citizens of Massachusetts responsible for the “killing” of Sacco and Vanzetti and that his choice to refuse to have any interaction with the state of Massachusetts “is merely necessary to my own integrity.”5 Based on the reaction expressed in this letter, it is not surprising that he painted Sacco and Vanzetti shortly after he received news of the execution.6 This letter to Mrs. Siple, paired with the physical act of painting Sacco and Vanzetti, serves as convincing evidence that Kent’s political and artistic selves were not mutually exclusive at the time he painted it.

The faces of Sacco and Vanzetti underline Kent’s artistic ability. Kent painted few other portraits in his artistic career, but was praised by Jake Milgram Wien as having great capability for developing his skills in portraiture.7 Although Kent did not physically meet the two men, he captures a certain likeness as he endows them with specific, individual personalities. It is likely that Kent captured their likeness from pictures in newspapers. Although the men have some wrinkles on their faces, their brows are relaxed and they are peaceful, as if asleep. The bright red blood dripping against the stark foreground contrasts harshly with their attitude. The foreground appears to be a marble slab, which suggests religious connotations, and recalls the coloristic contras in dramatic religious scenes such as Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading of Holofernes. Although Caravaggio’s depiction contrasts the bright red blood against white linen rather than marble, the subject matter and the contrasting colors are strikingly similar. The marble slab could also allude to The Entombment of Christ, another work by Caravaggio, in which Christ is laid to rest in a marble tomb after his crucifixion, The combination of these religious allusions enforces the idea that these two men are martyrs. Although not religious martyrs, to Kent they were political martyrs in a strongly anti-immigrant, anti-Italian climate. Kent utilizes this portrait to speak to a perceived injustice: he is using his artwork to express his political ideology. Understanding Sacco and Vanzetti as an interaction between artistic and political expression unpacks a new layer of depth not only to this piece, but also to Kent’s artistic career as a whole.

Kent actively created art for a better part of the twentieth century; he is arguably one of its better-known American artists. He was formally trained in architecture at Columbia University, but ultimately chose to study art under Kenneth Hayes Miller, William Merritt Chase, Abbot Handerson Thayer, and Robert Henri.8 Kent’s work is varied across different media and is frequently divided into different periods. The transcendentalist movement heavily influenced his work during the early 1900s through the 1920s; during this time, he created striking landscape paintings inspired by his travels to places like Greenland, Alaska, and the Straits of Magellan. During the early 20th century, when Kent was learning from Thayer, he was exposed to the works of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, which influenced the reverence for the wilderness expressed in his landscape paintings. It was after a summer with Thayer that Kent chose to leave Columbia and enroll in the New York School of Art.9

Although Kent studied art, he worked as an architect during the teens and twenties. By the late 1920s, he had begun illustrating books for publishers like Random House and was also creating cartoons and illustrations under the pen name Hogarth, Jr.10 His illustrations, featured in a number of publications, including Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair have been characterized as “comment[ary] on society’s foibles.”11 He frequently poked fun at happenings in the upper-echelons of New York Society. Although Kent was working under a pseudonym, it is hard to deny the social and political undercurrents of the works published by Hogarth, Jr. Despite this, “with few exceptions… Kent did not mix politics and art until the mid-1930s.”12

Because Kent is well-known for his political actions in the 1950s and 1960s, art historians and critics frequently divide Kent’s work into two eras: pre-political and post-political. This idea is underlined by the negative impact that Kent’s political involvements had on his career. During the Cold War period Kent’s socialist ideas were increasingly unacceptable in the public eye, but this did not prevent Kent from being vocal about his political beliefs. He donated eight hundred prints and eighty paintings to the people of Russia in the late 1950s and at one point had his passport revoked by the House Un-American Activities Committee.13

The damage to Kent’s artistic reputation is significant enough that many art historians separate Kent’s political self from his artistic self. In Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern, Wien identifies two different Kents: the transcendentalist that created moving landscape paintings and the later radical socialist that gifted a number of his works to the Soviet Union. However, in 1980 (more than two decades before Wien’s book on Kent was published), Ken Lawless made a clear connection between the two Kents that Wien identified. Lawless wrote, “Kent was doggedly loyal to radicalism and to realism for reasons that are related to his inveterate romanticism.”14 Kent himself made a connection between romanticism and his political beliefs, calling his early politics both “romantic” and “fatuous.”15 Later in his life, Kent reflected and saw a connection between his own romantic attitudes and political beliefs; this further underscores the connection between Kent’s political and artistic ideology. This framework is crucial for understanding Sacco and Vanzetti within the larger context of Kent’s work.

Although Sacco and Vanzetti arose as a response to a singular historical event, it also reflects the relationship between Kent’s art and his personal political ideology. This specific example speaks to a larger relationship between Kent’s artistic and political self. Kent himself said that artists are “those proverbial escapists from civic responsibility” and prided himself in his political actions as an artist.16 Viewing Sacco and Vanzetti within the broader intersection between Kent’s art and political thinking provides for a richer understanding. Rather than an isolated incident, Sacco and Vanzetti is part of a deeper conversation about the intersection between the artistic and the political. Eugene and Beulah Link held this same viewpoint when they decided to donate Sacco and Vanzetti to the Chazen, formerly Elvehjem, for educational purposes. By sharing this work with an educational institution, they hoped viewers would begin to raise questions about the artistic and the political.

The Links gave Sacco and Vanzetti to the Chazen Museum of Art in 1997. The couple was close to Rockwell and Sally Kent, and wished to share this piece, which “stands as a poignant reminder of the consequences of social and political attitudes gone awry.”17 When they purchased the piece, they agreed to donate it “for labor education purchases” rather than to sell it.18 The Links both worked in education for a number of years and chose to donate the gift to the School for Workers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In an article about the donation, Ellen Perlo said19, “this is a canvas that should be seen, a work of art that should be recognized as an important segment of the history of the United States, of the immigrant workers who build our country – as well as a unique example of the versatility of a great American artist.”20 Perlo’s statement about Kent and his influences speak to the power of the intersection between art and politics. This current exhibition permits Sacco and Vanzetti to be shown to the students and faculty at University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as the citizens of the state of Wisconsin, in order to allow questions about “social and political attitudes gone awry” and their consequences.

Anna Lynn

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1Ellen Perlo, “Kent painting of Sacco and Vanzetti at Wisc. Museum.” People’s Weekly World (2000): 17.

2Perlo, “Kent painting at Wisc. Museum,” 18.

3Perlo, “Kent painting at Wisc. Museum,” 18.

4Perlo, “Kent painting at Wisc. Museum,” 18.

5Rockwell Kent, letter to Mrs. Walter H. Siple, 23 August 1927.

6Rockwell Kent, letter to Mrs. Walter H. Siple, 23 August 1927.

7Jake Milgram Wien, Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern (Hudson Hills Press: Manchester, 2005): 113.

8“KENT, Rockwell.” Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online.

9Wien, The Mythic and the Modern, 8-11.

10Wien, The Mythic and the Modern, 81.

11Wien, The Mythic and the Modern, 81.

12Wien, The Mythic and the Modern, 82.

13“Rockwell Kent Home Page – Biography.” Accessed 10 November 2015. http://organizations.plattsburgh.edu/museum/rk_bio.htm.

14Ken Lawless, “Continental Imprisonment: Rockwell Kent and the Passport Controversy.” The Antioch Review (1980): 306.

15Lawless, “Continental Imprisonment,” 307.

16Lawless, “Continental Imprisonment,” 308.

17Eugene P. Link, “Eugene & Beulah Link Donate Painting.” The Kent Collector (Spring 1998): 16.

18Liz Pasti, “More About the Sacco-Vanzetti Painting.” The Kent Collector (Spring 1998): 17.

19It is, however, important to note that Ellen Perlo and her husband, Victor, kept correspondence with Rockwell and Sally Kent for a number of years. They shared many of the same political ideologies and frequently discussed politics in their correspondences.

20Perlo, “Lent painting at Wisc. Museum,” 18.

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Rockwell Kent - Sacco and Vanzetti