Men and Mountains 1909

Rockwell Kent made this oil painting, Men and Mountains, sometime in the twentieth century. Look at the way he’s built up that sky with confident strokes! It’s like he's wrestling with the paint to capture the weight of those gathering clouds. I love that. The palette is earthy, but the physicality of the paint gives it life. See the thick impasto on the clouds, how it contrasts with the thinner washes in the foreground? It’s all about texture, how the light catches those raised areas, making the whole scene shimmer. Check out the figures in the foreground. They are rendered with quick, assured strokes and grounded by their shadows. These act as grounding elements that add a sense of depth to the scene. Kent reminds me of Gustave Courbet who also painted figures in nature. It's a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation, a constant reinterpretation of ideas across time.