Rutgers, the Dutch Reformed Church, & Langdon-Rockstein Connections

 

 Kirkpatrick Chapel  New Brunswick  New Jersey

 

In the fall of 1959, several of my classmates from the Riverside High School [Riverside, New Jersey] Class of 1959 and I entered Rutgers College in New Brunswick [NJ]. Three of us started out residing on the same floor in Freylinghuysen Hall, one of three newish, high-rise dorms 'on the banks of the Old Raritan' that also included Hardenbergh Hall and [then] Livingston Hall, now renamed as Campbell Hall.. 

 

The following semester I moved across the street into Hegeman Hall, part of a quad, consisting of Hegeman, Wessels, Leupp, and Pell Halls known collectively as the Bishop quadrangle on what was part of the Old Queens College campus..  

 

When I started at Rutgers I didn't know that it had been founded by members of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). I hadn't even ever heard of the DRC before I matriculated!  Well, many years later, when I became deeply involved in our family history, I found so many Dutch surnames in my family tree that I thought to see if we were related to any of the people for whom the quad was named. 

 

Remarkably, I found that not only were we related to one, but that we were related to many of the people for whom buildings on the College Avenue Old Queens Campus were named. Also, Henry Rutgers, the benefactor after whom the school was named, is my 4th cousin seven times removed (4c 7x). 

 

Starting near the top of the map above and going down the campus, more or less, here are the buildings and name connections below.

 

Simeon De Witt [4c 6x] Building, one of the School of Communications & Information's buildings.

 

Alexander Library named for Archibald Stevens Alexander [half 9c 2x] 

 

Brower Commons was the Rutgers dining hall, recently replaced by the Atrium, was named for Charles H. Brower  [half 9c 3x].

Clothier Hall was named for my 12c 1x, Robert Clarkson Clothier, the fourteenth President of Rutgers. He was the nephew of Isaac Hallowell Clothier [11c 2x] one of the founding partners of the Strawbridge and Clothier Department stores.

 

Mettler Hall was named for John Wyckoff Mettler [7c 2x] the founder and president of Interwoven Stocking Company of Somerset County, New Jersey, and member of Rutgers Board of Trustees.

Bishop House was built for James Bishop [3c 6x], a prominent businessman and Congressman.

Hegeman Hall is after John Rogers Hegeman, sr. [6c 4x] who had been the President of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company from 1891 until his retirement.. 

 

Wessels Hall, is named after Wessel Wessels [5c 5x.] Leupp, however, was not not related, but Pell, was named for John Henry Pell husband of Mary Bogert Wessels [6c 4x] whose father was Wessel Wessels. She donated the funds for both her father's and husband's namesake buildings. 

 

Demarest Hall was named after William Henry Steel Demarest [6c 3x] who was the first Rutgers alum to become President of Rutgers and who as president, established New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College) in 1918. 

 

Freylinghuysen Hall was named for the Freylinghuysen family and I have four notable cousins among them with intimate connections to the history of Rutgers College.. 

 

Voorhees Hall was named for Ralph Garret Voorhees [6c 5x]. 

 

Hardenbergh Hall named after Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh [4c 7x] who was the first president of Rutgers College..

 

Brett Hall  was named in honor of Philip Milledoler Brett  (husband of Margaret Abbie Strong [7c 2x]). Brett was the captain of the football team that played Princeton University in 1892 in which he was apocryphally credited with saying: "I'd die to win this game." Which gave rise to the song "Nobody Ever Died for Dear Old Rutgers" in the Broadway musical "High Button Shoes."

Van Nest Hall, where I had all my classics courses, was named in honor of Abraham Van Nest [3c 7x].

 

Gardner A. Sage Library  was named for Gardner Avery Sage [7c 5x], an active member of the DRC who donated the library building and other properties to the seminary.

 

Murray Hall  is named in honor of the mathematician David Murray [7c 4x],who greatly influenced Rutgers' development in mathematics and sciences and who later was an advisor to Meiji era Japan.

Van Nest Hall, where I had several classes has been renovated and repurposed, was named after Abraham Van Nest [3c 7x] who was the President of Greenwich Savings Bank and who served as a Rutgers trustee for forty years.

The Daniel S. Schanck Observatory was built in 1865, largely funded by New York City businessman Daniel S, Schanck [husband of my 6c 4x Mary Ann Smock].

Geology Hall  was built with funds raised by Rutgers 8th president William Henry Campbell [husband of my 6c 5x, Catherine Elsie Schoonmaker] and designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh  [8c 3x].

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF RUTGERS EARLY HISTORY

 

Rutgers was founded by charter signed by Governor William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, November 10, 1766. The college was to be called Queens College in honor of Charlotte of Mecklenburg, wife of King George III of England [7c 5x].  

 

A second charter was signed by Governor Franklin on March 20, 1770, in order to allow resident status for New York residents as well as New Jersey residents in order to make it easier to raise funds especially with affluent members of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York.

 

In May of 1771 the Board of Trustees selected New Brunswick, New Jersey, for the permanent site of the campus. Beginning in November of 1771 classes were first held in what was then the Red Lion Inn. Teaching a handful of students there was by Frederick Theodore Freylinghuysen [3c 7x], the eighteen year old grandson of Theodorus Jacobus Freylinghuysen (husband of my 1c 9x, Eva Terhune) and the stepson of Jacob Rutsen Hardenburg [4c 7x].

Queen’s College held its first commencement in October, 1774. Nineteen-year-old Matthew Leydt (QC1774) [4c 6x] was the entire graduating class.  

Distinguished alumni of the 1700's included James Schureman Queens College (QC '75) {who was the husband of  Eleanor Davidse Williamson [3c 7x]} who represented New Jersey in the Continental Congress and later the U.S. House and Simeon De Witt (QC1776) [4c 6x],  who was served George Washington as Geographer and Surveyor General of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and later served as Surveyor General of the State of New York for the fifty years from 1784 until his death. 

 

The first president of Queens College was Reverend Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh. [4c 7x]

 

 The second President was  Reverend William Adolphus Linn husband of Helena Louw [6c 4x] who was selected after the death of President Hardenbergh.

 

The Reverend Ira Condict , husband of Sarah Perrine [5c 6x] was selected by the Trustees as president pro tempore. The college's third president, Condict, was instrumental in raising funds to support the building of the Queen's College Building, the school's first dedicated building, April 27, 1809

 

Notable alumni of the period 1800-1850 include William Augustus Newell (QC 36), White House Physician, New Jersey Governor [first of six Rutgers alumni to be governor of New Jersey], and father of the U.S. Coast Guard. 

 

The fourth President of Rutgers was Reverend John Henry Livingston , husband of Sarah Levy Livingston, [4c 6x] {yes, her surname was also Livingston, they were second cousins}.

 

In 1825 Queens College was renamed Rutgers College in honor of Colonel Henry Rutgers [4c 7x] . In March of 1825 Colonel Rutgers also donated a bell that still hangs in the cupola of the Old Queens building.

Former U/S. Congressman Abraham Bruyn Hasbrouck, husband of Helena Jansen [4c 7x] was named the sixth President of Rutgers and the first layman to serve as President.

Theodore Freylinghuysen [half 6c 4x], once U.S. Senator, one-time Whig Party Vice-Presidential nominee running with Henry Clay of Kentucky at the top of the ticket, and former President of New York University became the seventh President of Rutgers.

 

On April 21, 1847, the cornerstone of the second instructional building, Van Nest Hall was laid. The hall was named for Abraham Van Nest [3c 7x], a New York City merchant, president of Greenwich Bank, and devoted Rutgers trustee.The building was designed by Nicholas Wyckoff [half 7c 4x].

 

New Jersey Governor Foster McGowan Voorhees (RC '77)  [half 7c 2x ], was one of the distinguished alumni of the period 1850-1900.

In 1859, blaming declining enrollment, inadequate funding, and student and public apathy on an unruly faculty, President Theodore Frelinghuysen [half 6c 4x] fired every faculty member except George H. Cook, who would go on to have a major impact on the college.

 

Theodore Frelinghuysen  [his first wife was Charlotte Mercer, [half 6c 4x], former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, U.S. vice presidential candidate in 1844, and former chancellor of New York University, was inaugurated as the seventh president of Rutgers. Enrollment grew under his watch, but the gains were short-lived as students left to fight in the Civil War. 

 

Theological Hall was built to house seminary work, marking, for the first time, the physical separation of the college from the church.

 

The eighth President of Rutgers College was William Henry Campbell, husband of Catharine Elsie Schoonmaker [5c 5x]. Campbell had been professor of Oriental languages in the Theological Seminary and professor of belles lettres in Rutgers College.

 

In May 1886 Robert H. Pruyn (RC1833, '36), husband of Jane Ann Lansing [6c 4x] and who had been appointed by President Lincoln, presented his credentials to serve as the second U.S. ambassador, or envoy, to Japan at a time when that country was just beginning to open up to the West. 

 

Alumnus George Henry Sharpe (RC1847, '50) [ 6c 5x] was tasked by Union Army Major General Joseph Hooker to "pull together an organization charged with getting information about the enemy." First called the Secret Service Department, his unit was later known as the Bureau of Military Information. Sharpe's Civil War creation was "an all-source intelligence organization," the Army's first. Sharpe's wife was Caroline Hasbrouck, a daughter of Rutgers' sixth president, Abraham Bruyn Hasbrouck.

 

In 1864 the Dutch Reformed Church severed its ties with Rutgers when the school became the land grant university of the State of New Jersey under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts .

In 1865 Francis Cuyler Van Dyck (RC1865), husband of Sara Van Nuis [3c 4x], who would later be appointed the college's first dean, enrolled in the Rutgers Scientific School as a graduate student in chemistry, the first graduate student at Rutgers. "At that time there were no formal courses for graduate students, and provision had not yet been made for 'earned' graduate degrees."

 

President Lincoln signed legislation establishing the National Academy of Sciences to advise the federal government on matters of science. Rutgers mathematician Theodore Strong [8c 5x] was named a charter member. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years 1863–1963 describes Strong as "an excellent pure mathematician ... he was at work on a treatise on differential and integral calculus.

 

On December 17, 1867, President Andrew Johnson submitted to the House of Representatives George Henry Sharpe's (RC1847, '50) [6c 5x] investigative report on possible European connections to the Lincoln assassination. Sharpe was sent to Europe by Secretary of State William Seward "to ascertain, if possible, whether any citizens of the United States in that quarter, other than those who have heretofore been suspected and charged with the offense, were instigators of, or concerned in, the assassination of the late President Lincoln."

 

Geological Hall, a Gothic brownstone structure which houses the departments of geology, physics, and military science, was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh [8c 3x], great-great-grandson of Rutgers' first president, Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh . Today, on its second floor, is the Rutgers Geology Museum, nationally recognized for its outstanding collection of minerals, fossils, Indian relics, and modern shells. A 10,000-year-old mastodon has dominated the museum for over a century.

 

Mason Welch Gross [10c] served in World War II in the Army Intelligence Corps, and was assigned to a bomber group based in Italy. Gross earned the Bronze Star, and was later discharged as a Captain. He then became Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Assistant to the Dean of Arts and Science at Rutgers University in 1946. In 1947 he was promoted to assistant dean and associate professor, and in 1949 was appointed to the newly created position of provost to take over the duties of the ailing Robert Clarkson Clothier who took a leave of absence. Clothier resigned his office in 1951 and Gross continued as provost under the newly appointed Lewis Webster Jones. He was then given the additional title of vice president in 1958. Jones resigned the presidency in August 1958, and in February 1959, Gross was chosen as president. On May 6, 1959, he became the sixteenth president of Rutgers University. [From 1949 to 1950 he was a panelist on the television quiz show, Think Fast. He was also a judge for the show, Two for the Money from 1952 to 1955.] The Rutgers School for the Creative and Performing Arts at Rutgers was renamed as the Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1979 in his honor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jim Harbaugh--Head Coach University of Michigan, former Head Coach of the San Francisco 49ers

 

James Joseph Harbaugh (/ˈhɑːrbɔː/; born December 23, 1963) is an American football coach and former quarterback who is the 20th and current head football coach of the Michigan Wolverines. He played college football at Michigan from 1983 to 1986. He played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons from 1987 to 2000 with his longest tenure as a player with the Chicago Bears. He served as the head coach of the San Diego Toreros (2004–2006), the Stanford Cardinal (2007–2010), and the NFL's San Francisco 49ers (2011–2014). In 2015, Harbaugh returned to his alma mater, the University of Michigan.

Harbaugh was born in Toledo, Ohio. His father, Jack Harbaugh, was a football coach, and the family lived in Ohio, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, and California. He attended high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Palo Alto, California, when his father was an assistant coach at Michigan and Stanford, respectively. After graduation from high school in Palo Alto in 1982, Harbaugh returned to Ann Arbor and enrolled at the University of Michigan and played quarterback for the Wolverines, starting for three seasons. As a fifth-year senior in 1986, he led Michigan to the 1987 Rose Bowl and was a Heisman Trophy finalist, finishing third.

The Chicago Bears selected Harbaugh in the first round of the 1987 NFL Draft. He played 14 years as a quarterback in the NFL, with Chicago from 1987 to 1993, the Indianapolis Colts from 1994 to 1997, the Baltimore Ravens in 1998, and the San Diego Chargers in 1999 to 2000. He first became a regular starting quarterback in 1990 with Chicago. In 1995 with Indianapolis, he led the Colts to the AFC Championship Game, was selected to the Pro Bowl and was honored as NFL Comeback Player of the Year.

From 1994 to 2001, while still playing in the NFL, Harbaugh was an unpaid assistant coach at Western Kentucky University, where his father Jack was head coach. In 2002, he returned to the NFL as the quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders. Harbaugh returned to the college ranks in 2004 as the head coach at the University of San Diego. After leading San Diego to consecutive Pioneer League championships in 2005 and 2006, he moved to Stanford in 2007, where he led the Cardinal to two bowl berths in four seasons, including a win in the 2011 Orange Bowl. Immediately afterward, Harbaugh signed a five-year deal as head coach of the NFL's San Francisco 49ers, where he led the team to the NFC Championship game in each of his first three seasons after the franchise missed the playoffs for eight consecutive seasons beforehand. He and his older brother, Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, became the first pair of brothers to serve as head coaches in NFL history. Their teams played in a Thanksgiving Classic game in 2011 and in Super Bowl XLVII at the end of the 2012 season.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, on December 23, 1963, Harbaugh is the son of Jacqueline M. "Jackie" (née Cipiti) and Jack Harbaugh. His mother is of half-Sicilian and half-Polish ancestry and his father is of Irish and German ancestry. Both Jim and his brother John were born in Toledo, while his father was an assistant football coach at nearby Perrysburg High School in Perrysburg.

During Harbaugh's childhood, the family moved frequently, as his father held assistant coaching positions at Morehead State (1967), Bowling Green (1967–1970), Iowa (1971–1973), Michigan (1973–1979), Stanford (1980–1981), and Western Michigan (1982–1986). Harbaugh played for the junior league Ann Arbor Packers and then for Tappan Junior High before moving on to Pioneer High School. When his father became defensive coordinator at Stanford, he transferred to Palo Alto High School, graduating in 1982.

Harbaugh received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in communications from the University of Michigan in 1986. Wikipedia   [for his football career cf., Wikipedia ]

John Harbaugh--Baltimore Ravens Head Coach

 

 

John William Harbaugh (/ˈhɑːrbɔː/; born September 23, 1962) is an American football coach who is the head coach for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL). Previously, he coached the defensive backs for the Philadelphia Eagles and served as the Eagles special teams coach for nine years. Harbaugh and his younger brother, former San Francisco 49ers and current University of Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh, are the first pair of brothers in NFL history to serve as head coaches. Jack Harbaugh, Jim and John's father, served 45 years as a college defensive coach, an assistant coach, and a running backs coach. John and the Ravens beat his brother, Jim, and the 49ers at Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans on February 3, 2013, by a score of 34–31.

Harbaugh has led the Ravens to 164 wins (including playoffs) since his tenure began in 2008, the fourth-most wins in the NFL over that span, and has surpassed Brian Billick for the most wins by a head coach in Baltimore Ravens franchise history. In his fifteen-year tenure as Ravens head coach, Harbaugh has led the Ravens to eleven winning seasons and only two losing seasons. His 19 playoff game appearances are the second-most by any head coach in the NFL since 2008. He is also the only head coach in NFL history to win a playoff game in six of the first seven seasons of a coaching career and has the most road playoff wins by a head coach (8). Outside of winning Super Bowl XLVII, Harbaugh has guided the Ravens to four AFC North division championships, three AFC Championship appearances and a franchise-best 14–2 record in 2019.

John Harbaugh was born in Toledo, Ohio, to Jackie Cipiti and Jack Harbaugh. John Harbaugh graduated from Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, during which time his father Jack was an assistant under Bo Schembechler at the nearby University of Michigan.

Harbaugh attended college and played varsity football as a defensive back at Miami University, where he graduated in 1984.

Ravens Head Coach: The 2012 Baltimore Ravens finished with a 10–6 record and won the AFC North They defeated the Indianapolis Colts 24–9 in the Wild Card Round and the Denver Broncos 38–35 in the Divisional Round. They again met the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship (on January 20, 2013), got their revenge with a 28–13 victory (coming from behind with a 13–7 second half), and was the first time Tom Brady and Bill Belichick lost a home game after leading at halftime, giving John the opportunity to face brother Jim and the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII on February 3, 2013. Many have pegged Super Bowl XLVII as the "Harbowl". The Ravens were victorious, defeating the 49ers 34–31. Following the victory, John gave his entire staff replica Lombardi trophies to commemorate the victory.  Wikipedia   [cf., Wikipedia for additional career information ]

Norman Rockwell

Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life (now Scout Life), calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent^[2] and A Guiding Hand.

Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than 4,000 original works in his lifetime. Most of his surviving works are in public collections. Rockwell was also commissioned to illustrate more than 40 books, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as well as painting the portraits for Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as those of foreign figures, including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. His portrait subjects included Judy Garland. One of his last portraits was of Colonel Sanders in 1973. His annual contributions for the Boy Scouts calendars between 1925 and 1976 (Rockwell was a 1939 recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America), were only slightly overshadowed by his most popular of calendar works: the "Four Seasons" illustrations for Brown & Bigelow that were published for 17 years beginning in 1947 and reproduced in various styles and sizes since 1964. He created artwork for advertisements for Coca-Cola, Jell-O, General Motors, Scott Tissue, and other companies. Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "God Bless the Hills", which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's oeuvre as an illustrator.

Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. Many of his works appear overly sweet in the opinion of modern critics, especially the Saturday Evening Post covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life. This has led to the often deprecatory adjective "Rockwellesque". Consequently, Rockwell is not considered a "serious painter" by some contemporary artists, who regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch. Writer Vladimir Nabokov stated that Rockwell's brilliant technique was put to "banal" use, and wrote in his novel Pnin: "That Dalí is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnaped by gypsies in babyhood." He is called an "illustrator" instead of an artist by some critics, a designation he did not mind, as that was what he called himself.

In his later years, however, Rockwell began receiving more attention as a painter when he chose more serious subjects such as the series on racism for Look magazine. One example of this more serious work is The Problem We All Live With, which dealt with the issue of school racial integration. The painting depicts Ruby Bridges, flanked by white federal marshals, walking to school past a wall defaced by racist graffiti. This 1964 painting was displayed in the White House when Bridges met with President Barack Obama in 2011. Wikpedia  [for fuller career details click here]

 

 

 

Rockwell Kent--An American Modernist

Rockwell Kent was born in Tarrytown, New York. Kent was of English descent. He lived much of his early life in and around New York City, where he attended the Horace Mann School. Kent studied with several influential painters and theorists of his day. He studied composition and design with Arthur Wesley Dow at the Art Students League in the fall of 1900, and he studied painting with William Merritt Chase each of the three summers between 1900 and 1902 at the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art, after which he entered in the fall of 1902 Robert Henri's class at the New York School of Art, which Chase had founded. During the summer of 1903, in Dublin, New Hampshire, Kent was apprenticed to painter and naturalist Abbott Handerson Thayer. An undergraduate background in architecture at Columbia University prepared Kent for occasional work in the 1900s and 1910s as an architectural renderer and carpenter. At Columbia, Kent befriended future curator Carl Zigrosser, who became his close friend, supporter, and collaborator.

Kent's early paintings of Mount Monadnock and New Hampshire were first shown at the Society of American Artists in New York in 1904, when Dublin Pond was purchased by Smith College. In 1905 Kent ventured to Monhegan Island, Maine, and found its rugged and primordial beauty a source of inspiration for the next five years. His first series of paintings of Monhegan were shown to wide critical acclaim in 1907 at Clausen Galleries in New York. These works form the foundation of his lasting reputation as an early American modernist, and can be seen in museums across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, New Britain Museum of American Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Among those critics lauding Kent was James Huneker of the Sun, who praised Kent's athletic brushwork and daring color dissonances. (It was Huneker who deemed the paintings of The Eight as "decidedly reactionary".) In 1910, Kent helped organize the Exhibition of Independent Artists, and in 1911, together with Arthur B. Davies he organized An Independent Exhibition of the Paintings and Drawings of Twelve Men, referred to as "The Twelve" and "Kent's Tent". Painters Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Max Weber (but not John Sloan, Robert Henri, or George Bellows) participated in the 1911 exhibition. Kent was away in Winona, Minnesota, on an architectural assignment when the historic Armory Show took place in Manhattan in 1913.

A transcendentalist and mystic in the tradition of Thoreau and Emerson, whose works he read, Kent found inspiration in the austerity and stark beauty of wilderness. After Monhegan, he lived for extended periods of time in Winona, Minnesota (1912–1913), Newfoundland (1914–15), Alaska (1918–19), Vermont (1919–1925), Tierra del Fuego (1922–23), Ireland (1926), and Greenland (1929; 1931–32; 1934–35). His series of land and seascapes from these often forbidding locales convey the Symbolist spirit evoking the mysteries and cosmic wonders of the natural world. "I don't want petty self-expression", Kent wrote, "I want the elemental, infinite thing; I want to paint the rhythm of eternity."

In the late summer of 1918, Kent and his nine-year-old son ventured to the American frontier of Alaska. Wilderness (1920), the first of Kent's several adventure memoirs, is an edited and illustrated compilation of his letters home. The New Statesman (London) described Wilderness as "easily the most remarkable book to come out of America since Leaves of Grass was published." Upon the artist's return to New York in March 1919, publishing scion George Palmer Putnam and others, including Juliana Force—assistant to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney—incorporated the artist as "Rockwell Kent, Inc." to support him in his new Vermont homestead while he completed his paintings from Alaska for exhibition in 1920 at Knoedler Galleries in New York. Kent's small oil-on-wood-panel sketches from Alaska—uniformly horizontal studies of light and color—were exhibited at Knoedler's as "Impressions." Their artistic lineage to the small and spare oil sketches of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), which are often entitled "Arrangements," underscores Kent's admiration of Whistler's genius.

Approached in 1926 by publisher R. R. Donnelley to produce an illustrated edition of Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s Two Years Before the Mast, Kent suggested Moby-Dick instead. Published in 1930 by the Lakeside Press of Chicago, the three-volume limited edition (1,000 copies) filled with Kent's haunting black-and-white pen/brush and ink drawings sold out immediately; Random House also produced a trade edition.

Less well known are Kent's talents as a jazz age humorist. As the pen-and-ink draftsman "Hogarth Jr.," Kent created dozens of whimsical and smartly irreverent drawings published by Vanity Fair, New York Tribune, Harper's Weekly, and the original Life. He also brought his Hogarth Jr., style to a series of richly colored reverse paintings on glass that he completed in 1918 and exhibited at Wanamaker's Department Store. (Two of these glass paintings are in the collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, part of the bequest of modernist collector Ferdinand Howald.) In Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern, Jake Milgram Wien devotes an entire chapter to Hogarth Jr. and reproduces several of the ink drawings and reverse paintings on glass. Kent frequently crossed into the realm of illustration in the 1920s and contributed drawings for reproduction on the covers of many leading magazines. For example, Kent's pen, brush, and ink drawings were reproduced on the covers of the pulp magazine Adventure in 1927, leading Time magazine to say that "if it were distinguished for nothing else, Adventure would stand apart from rival 'pulps' ... because it was once entirely illustrated by Rockwell Kent ..." Decorative work ensued intermittently: in 1939, Vernon Kilns reproduced three series of designs drawn by Kent (Moby Dick, Salamina, Our America) on its sets of contemporary china dinnerware.

At the Art Students League in the 1920s or 1930s, Kent met and befriended many artists, including Wilhelmina Weber Furlong and Thomas Furlong.

Raymond Moore, founder and impresario of the Cape Playhouse and Cinema in Dennis, Massachusetts, contracted with Rockwell Kent for the design of murals for the cinema—including an extraordinarily expansive mural for the ceiling. The work of transferring and painting the designs on the 6,400-square-foot (590 m²) span was done by Kent's collaborator Jo Mielziner (1901–1976) and a crew of stage set painters from New York City. Ostensibly staying away from the state of Massachusetts to protest the Sacco and Vanzetti executions of 1927, Kent did in fact venture to Dennis in June 1930 to spend three days on the scaffolding, making suggestions and corrections. The signatures of both Kent and Mielziner appear on opposite walls of the cinema.

In 1927, Kent moved to upstate New York where he had acquired an Adirondack farmstead. Asgaard, as he named it, was his residence for the remainder of his life, and from his studio there he worked tirelessly on countless painting and drawing assignments. In the summer of 1929, Kent sailed on a painting expedition to Greenland, and his adventures (and misadventures) are recounted in the best-selling N by E (1930). After meeting Danish Arctic explorers Peter Freuchen and Knud Rasmussen on this trip, Kent determined to return to Greenland to paint and write. He spent two years (1931–32 and 1934–35) above the Arctic Circle in a tiny fishing settlement called Igdlorssuit (or Illorsuit), where he conceived some of the largest and most celebrated paintings of his career. His cross-cultural encounters in Greenland included Leni Riefenstahl, the famed German filmmaker/actor, who was briefly in Illorsuit with the film crew of S.O.S. Iceberg. Kent's own movie-making aspirations, including a quasi-documentary film featuring the Inuit, are explored in Rockwell Kent and Hollywood. Many of Kent's historic photographs and hand-tinted lantern slides are reproduced for the first time in North by Nuuk: Greenland after Rockwell Kent (Denis Defibaugh, 2019).

As World War II approached, Kent shifted his artistic agenda, becoming increasingly active in progressive politics. In 1937, the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the U.S. Treasury commissioned Kent, along with nine other artists, to paint two murals in the New Post Office building at the Federal Triangle in Washington, DC; the two murals are named "Mail Service in the Arctic" and "Mail Service in the Tropics" to celebrate the reach of domestic airborne postal service. Kent included (in an Alaska Native language and in tiny letters) a polemical statement in the painting, apparently a message from the indigenous people of Alaska to the Puerto Ricans, in support of decolonization. As translated, the communication read "To the peoples of Puerto Rico, our friends: Go ahead, let us change chiefs. That alone can make us equal and free". The incident caused some consternation.

Kent's patriotism never waned in spite of his often critical views of American foreign policy and his impatience with the promises of capitalism. He remained America's premier draftsman of the sea, and during World War II he produced a series of pen/brush and ink maritime drawings for American Export Lines and began another series of pen/brush and ink drawings for Rahr Malting Company which he completed in 1946. The drawings were reproduced in To Thee!, a book Kent also wrote and designed celebrating American freedom and democracy and the important role immigrants play in constructing American national identity. In 1948, Kent was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and in 1966 he became a full Academician. Kent passed away at his home in the Adirondacks in 1971.  

Although he came from a relatively privileged background, Kent formed radical political views early in life, joining the Socialist Party of America in 1904. He cast his first presidential vote for Eugene Debs that year, and for the rest of his life was ready to debate socialist ideas on any occasion. His respect for the dignity of labor, acquired through personal experience and the skills of his craft, also made him a strong supporter of unions. He briefly joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1912 and belonged at various times to unions in the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Kent's political activism came to the fore in the latter part of the 1930s, when he took part in several initiatives of the cultural popular front, including support for the Spanish Republic and the subsequent war against fascism. Most notably, he participated in the American Artists' Congress at the time of its formation in 1936 and later served as an officer of the Artists' Union of America and then the Artists' League of America in their efforts to represent artists to boards, museums and dealers. In 1948 he stood for Congress as an American Labor Party candidate supporting Henry Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign as the best option for extending the legacy of the New Deal.

In the changing postwar context, Kent advocated nuclear disarmament and continued friendship with America's wartime ally, the Soviet Union. This placed him on the wrong side of American Cold War policies. The Soviet Union extensively promoted Kent's work, who was among hundreds of other prominent intellectuals and creative artists targeted by those in league with Joseph McCarthy, but he and William Gropper share the distinction of being the only graphic artists to be targeted.

Kent was not a Communist and considered his political views to be in the best traditions of American democracy. However, his participation in the Stockholm Appeal and the World Peace Council led to the suspension of his passport in 1950. After he filed suit to regain his foreign-travel rights, in June 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court in Kent v. Dulles affirmed his right to travel by declaring the ban a violation of his civil rights. Meanwhile, Kent also came under attack as an officer of the International Workers Order, a mutual benefit and cultural society supported by leftists and immigrants. In 1951, Kent defended his record in court proceedings and exposed the perjured testimony that claimed he was a Communist.

From 1957 to 1971, Kent was president of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship.^[25] After a well-received exhibition of his work in Moscow at the Pushkin Museum in 1957–58, he donated several hundred of his paintings and drawings to the Soviet peoples in 1960. He subsequently became an honorary member of the Soviet Academy of Fine Arts and in 1967 the recipient of the International Lenin Peace Prize. Kent specified that his prize money be given to the women and children of Vietnam, both North and South. (The nature of Kent's gift is clarified by his wife Sally in the 2005 documentary Rockwell Kent, produced and written by Fred Lewis.) 

When Kent died of a heart attack in 1971, the New York Times published an extensive front-page obituary that commenced: "At various (and frequently simultaneous) periods of his long life the protean Rockwell Kent was an architect, painter, illustrator, lithographer, xylographer, cartoonist, advertising artist, carpenter, dairy farmer, explorer, trade union leader and political controversialist. "He is so multiple a person as to be multifarious," Louis Untermeyer, the poet, once observed." When an anthology of Kent's work was published in 1982, a reviewer of the book for the New York Times further described Kent as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States." Retrospectives of the artist's paintings and drawings have been mounted, by the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador in St. John's, Newfoundland, where the exhibition Pointed North: Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland and Labrador was curated by Caroline Stone in the summer of 2014. Other exhibitions include an exhibition in 2013 in Winona, Minnesota marking the centennial of Kent's time there; the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University (Canton, New York) in the autumn of 2012; the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) during the spring through autumn of 2012; the Bennington Museum in Vermont during the summer of 2012; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the spring through summer of 2012; and the Portland Museum of Art, Maine for the major summer show of 2005 commemorating the centenary of Kent's arrival on Monhegan Island.

2018 through 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of Kent's Alaskan painting expedition, his stay on Fox Island, and the publication of Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska. The letters he wrote and received during that time reveal a less than quiet experience beneath his book's narrative. Personal correspondence with his wife, Kathleen, and with Hildegarde Hirsch, his inamorata of that time, provide a fascinating glimpse into the backstory of his life. A more detailed account can be found at the blog Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal.

One of Kent's exemplary pen-and-ink drawings from Moby Dick appears on a U.S. postage stamp issued as part of the 2001 commemorative panel celebrating American Illustration, with other artistic examples by Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington, and Norman Rockwell. The year he spent in Newfoundland in 1914-1915 is fictionally recalled by Canadian writer Michael Winter in The Big Why, his 2004 Winterset Award-winning novel. Kent's work also figures in Steve Martin's 2010 novel An Object of Beauty and is the subject of a chapter in Douglas Brinkley's 2011 history The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom: 1879–1960.

Columbia University is the repository of Rockwell Kent's personal collection of 3,300 working drawings and sketches, most of which were unpublished. The gift was made in 1972 by Mr. and Mrs. Alfred C. Berol, Corliss Lamont, Mrs. Arthur Hayes Sulzberger, and Dan Burne Jones.

The Archives of American Art is the repository for Kent's voluminous correspondence. Wikipedia

 

 

Taylor Swift--Singer, Songwriter, Business Mangate

 

 

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Recognized for her songwriting, musical versatility, artistic reinventions, and influence on the music industry, she is a prominent cultural figure of the 21st century.

Swift began professional songwriting at age 14 and signed with Big Machine Records in 2005 to become a country singer. She released six studio albums under the label, four of them to country radio, starting with her 2006 self-titled album. Her next, Fearless (2008), explored country pop, and its singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me" catapulted her to mainstream fame. Speak Now (2010) infused rock influences, while Red (2012) experimented with electronic elements and featured Swift's first Billboard Hot 100 number-one song, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together". She departed from her country image with 1989 (2014), a synth-pop album supported by the chart-topping songs "Shake It Off", "Blank Space", and "Bad Blood". Media scrutiny inspired the hip-hop-flavored Reputation (2017) and its number-one single "Look What You Made Me Do".

Swift signed with Republic Records in 2018. She released the pop album Lover (2019) and autobiographical documentary Miss Americana (2020), embraced indie folk and alternative rock on 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore, explored chill-out styles on Midnights (2022), and released four re-recorded albums subtitled Taylor's Version after a dispute with Big Machine. The albums spawned the number-one songs "Cruel Summer", "Cardigan", "Willow", "Anti-Hero", "All Too Well" and "Is It Over Now?". In 2023, Swift embarked on the Eras Tour and released its top-grossing concert film. She has also directed music videos and films such as All Too Well: The Short Film (2021).

With over 200 million records sold globally, Swift is one of the best-selling musicians. She is the most-streamed woman on Spotify and Apple Music, the highest-grossing female performer ever, and the first billionaire with music as the main source of income. She has been featured in lists such as Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time and Billboard's Greatest of All Time Artists. Among her accolades are 12 Grammy Awards (including three Album of the Year wins), a Primetime Emmy Award, 40 American Music Awards (including Artist of the Decade – 2010s), 39 Billboard Music Awards, 23 MTV Video Music Awards, three IFPI Global Recording Artist of the Year awards, and 111 Guinness World Records. Swift is also a philanthropist and an advocate of artists' rights and women's empowerment. 

Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in West Reading, Pennsylvania. She is named after singer-songwriter James Taylor. Her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, is a former stockbroker for Merrill Lynch and her mother, Andrea Gardner Swift (née Finlay), is a former homemaker who previously worked as a mutual fund marketing executive. Taylor has a younger brother, actor Austin Swift, and is of Scottish, German, and Italian descent. Their maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, was an opera singer.

Swift spent her early years on a Christmas tree farm that her father had purchased from one of his clients. She is a Christian. She attended preschool and kindergarten at Alvernia Montessori School, a Montessori school run by the Bernadine Franciscan sisters, before transferring to the Wyndcroft School. The family moved to a rented house in the suburban town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, where Swift attended Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School. She spent summers in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, until she was 14 years old, performing in a local coffee shop.

At age nine, Swift became interested in musical theater and performed in four Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions. She also traveled regularly to New York City for vocal and acting lessons. Swift later shifted her focus toward country music, inspired by Shania Twain's songs, which made her "want to just run around the block four times and daydream about everything". She spent weekends performing at local festivals and events. After watching a documentary about Faith Hill, Swift felt she needed to move to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in music. She traveled there with her mother at age eleven to visit record labels and submitted demo tapes of Dolly Parton and Dixie Chicks karaoke covers. She was rejected, however, because "everyone in that town wanted to do what I wanted to do. So, I kept thinking to myself, I need to figure out a way to be different."

When Swift was around 12 years old, computer repairman and local musician Ronnie Cremer taught her to play guitar. Cremer helped with her first efforts as a songwriter, leading her to write "Lucky You". In 2003, Swift and her parents started working with New York–based talent manager Dan Dymtrow. With his help, Swift modeled for Abercrombie & Fitch as part of their "Rising Stars" campaign, had an original song included on a Maybelline compilation CD, and met with major record labels. After performing original songs at an RCA Records showcase, Swift, then 13 years old, was given an artist development deal and began making frequent trips to Nashville with her mother. To help Swift break into the country music scene, her father transferred to Merrill Lynch's Nashville office when she was 14 years old, and the family relocated to Hendersonville, Tennessee. Swift attended Hendersonville High School before transferring to Aaron Academy after two years, which better accommodated her touring schedule through homeschooling. She graduated one year early. Wikipedia

[For details of her career cf., Wikipedia]