ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)
Mount Bove (2,300m - 7,646 ft)
Chile (Tierra del Fuego)
In Calm Tierra del Fuego, oil on board, Private collection
The mountain
Mount Bove (2,300m - 7,646 ft) is a mountain in southern Chile located in the eastern part of the Darwin range (Darwin Cordillera or Western Fuego Cordillera). It is a mountain range located in Chile, on a peninsula west of the great island of Tierra del Fuego. Darwin Cordillera represents the southernmost mountainous cord of the Andean cordillera. Until 2011, Darwin Mountain Range was one of the last terrae incognitae on the planet.
The Darwin range was named in 1832 by its discoverer, Robert FitzRoy, the captain of the ship HMS Beagle, in honor of the naturalist Charles Darwin who stayed on board. It is a strip of land 60 kilometers wide and 170 kilometers long, mainly occupied by an ice field of more than 2,300 km2, which is about the same area as all the glaciers in the Alps. Its highest point is Mount Shipton, whose altitude is 2,469 m. It is surrounded by sea: along the Almirantazgo Canal - connected to the Strait of Magellan - to the south by the Beagle Channel, it ends at west through the Cockburn Canal and the Pacific Ocean. Only its eastern part is connected to the land, close to the border with Argentina. The nearest cities are Ushuaia, Argentina as well as Puerto Williams and Porvenir, Chile. However, it is impossible to travel to the mountains from this city by land because of particularly difficult terrain and border problems. Ships and sailboats are the most suitable for its access. The Darwin mountain range is part of the Alberto de Agostini National Park.
About the artist
Rockwell Kent spent much of his life in New York City, studying painting under influential artists including William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri before venturing in 1903 to New Hampshire to apprentice with Abbott Handerson Thayer. Kent’s personal stylistic formation was influenced by modernism, grounded in realism, and wedded to his mystical beliefs about the power of nature and man’s insignificance in face of it. In 1905 Kent moved to Monhegan Island in Maine, the first of a series of trips to remote locations that included Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and Tierra del Fuego. Kent attended Socialist meetings in Pittsfield, MA in 1909, and his politics became increasingly controversial after WWII. By the 1930s he was associated with the Communist Party. During the Cold War, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was denied a passport in 1957. He eventually gave eighty works of art to the Soviet Union.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau