Consonances spring from a likeminded understanding of artistic purpose: Kent and Hopper bared their souls on canvas. Yet lifelong visual correspondences can be seen when their signature works are selectively paired. Signed and dated “Rockwell Kent 1935-7” at lower left. Museum of Modern Art, New York licensed by SCALA/ Art Resource, NY.
House by the Railroad by Hopper, 1925. Ink with opaque white on paper, 8 5/8 by 11 inches. Whitney Museum of American Art, Josephine N. 
Fabricated chalk on paper, 12 by 19 inches.
Study for Morning Sun by Hopper, 1952. Graphite on paper, 8 1/8 by 5 1/2 inches. Inscribed “Rockwell Kent (Sketch for woodblock ‘Man at Mast’)” at lower left. Whitney Museum of American Art, given in memory of Otto L. South Carolina Morning by Hopper, 1955. Unless otherwise noted, all Hopper works copyright of Heirs of Josephine N. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, museum purchase with funds from Brooke Garber Neidich, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Laurie Tisch and Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo. Etching on wove paper, 9 1/4 by 10 1/2 inches. 
The Open Window by Edward Hopper (1882-1967), c. Unless otherwise noted, for Kent images, all rights reserved, Plattsburgh State Art Museum, State University of New York, Rockwell Kent Collection, bequest of Sally Kent Gorton. Rarer still are comparisons of the laconic styles and techniques that produced pictures with few moving parts.7 Occasional mention is made of their overlapping worlds, including Maine and Vermont (where both painted) and New York (where Kent lived next to Hopper for a short time and engaged the same dealer, Frank K. Kent and Hopper shared a predilection-rarely mentioned and never examined-for scenes of isolation intended to move rather than console.6 When the two artists appear on the same art historical page, the topic of discussion is invariably their kindred origins: born a month apart and within miles of each other, they grew up in white, Christian, upper middleclass families, studied painting under William Merritt Chase, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Robert Henri, and often shared classes and exhibited early works in the same group shows in New York. The poet Mark Strand regarded the “emotional weight” of Hopper’s work as the force that lifted his paintings “into the suggestive, quasi mystical realm of meditation.”5 Private collection.Įdward Hopper also painted scenes of hushed silence where the real and imagined meld into enigmatic realms of the mind. “I want the elemental, infinite thing I want to paint the rhythm of eternity.”2 He perceived the earth and heavens as psychological force fields imposing their nature upon man to make him what he is.3 Critics recognized a “stark strength” and “mystic imagination” pulsing through his paintings of Monhegan Island, Newfoundland, the Alaska Territory, and Tierra del Fuego.4Ī Young Sailor by Kent, c. 
Kent hoped viewers would lose themselves in contemplation before his haunting visions.1 “Essentials only ought to go into painting,” he insisted. Consider Rockwell Kent’s paintings of land and sea as modern American mindscapes-poetic distillations of remote places that probe the mysteries of life.
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