The Burial
Rockwell KENT
(American, 1882-1971)
The Burial
Date1941
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 34 × 44 in.
ClassificationPAINTINGS
Credit LineGift of Ann and Tom Barwick Family Collection in honor of Richard West
Object number2020.20
Subject(s)
- men
Collection
- 20th century American
Sub-Collection(s)
- Modernism
On View
Not on viewCollections
Label TextKent was one of the towering figures of 20th-century American modernism. Like writers Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, his work and life embodied the kind of rugged individualism then construed as intrinsic to Americanness. A fearless adventurer, Kent traveled to Greenland repeatedly, staying long enough to become familiar with the locals and an admirer of their vital relationship to land and sea. This painting was likely based upon a photograph. Its planar flatness is typical of the artist, as is the distillation of things seen into a dramatic simplification of forms. Five Inuit men peer down into what we presume is a freshly dug grave. Behind them is a cemetery punctuated by simple white crosses, similar to those featured in an earlier painting from 1929 (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) depicting the church and graveyard near Illorsuit, where we know that the artist was living. The theme of death and its immediate aftermath recurs throughout Kent’s oeuvre, although the message conveyed here remains ambiguous.
