HISTORY:                  

In August, 1918 Kent and his eldest son, known as Rocky, traveled to Alaska: staying on Fox Island, in Resurrection Bay, off the coast of Seward, until March, 1919. They shared the small island with the resident (then 71 year old) Alaskan pioneer, Lars Matt Olson. There, on the west side of the island, on Northwest Harbor, Kent painted, drew, experimented with relief printing, and kept a diary that would become his book, Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska. Alaskan Inlet depicts Kent’s view of the wooded headland,  looking northwest across the harbor. Kent began several large paintings on site (as well as many smaller works that he referred to as “impressions”). At the end of his stay on Fox Island he would roll up the canvases to ship home. Upon his return he would unroll and mount on board, many of these canvases, either completing them or “touching them up” at a later time. This painting is referred to by Kent as “Alaska Inlet” in letters from 1954, but in the caption in his autobiography, It’s Me O Lord (1955) he titles it “Alaskan Inlet.” A remnant label on the verso of the painting Titles the work, “Alaska Inlet” (authorship of handwriting unknown). There is an article about the estate in Virginia Living, December 2009 issue online at Virginialiving.com.