Reveries, a wood engraving

Reveries, a wood engraving conceived and cut by Rockwell Kent, though not published during the artist’s lifetime. It was, however, printed posthumously in an edition of 50 by Letterio Calapai, with the permission of the Kent estate, in January, 1976.

Reveries measures 7 7/8 x 5 15/16 inches and is printed on rice paper. This print is estate stamped lower right and bears Calapai’s chop mark lower left.

A preliminary drawing of this composition appears in The Prints of Rockwell Kent: A Catalogue Raisonné, by Dan Burne Jones (#63) – in the entry for Kent’s wood engraving, The Bather (1931). In a caption for this study Kent wrote: “(Sketch for wood block, not executed) Original ‘Bather.'”

The print is illustrated in the revised edition of the Burne Jones book (by Robert Rightmire) in Appendix 1, “Posthumous Prints,” #P6. In Rightmire’s entry he repeats most of a statement by John Gorton – Sally Kent Gorton’s second husband – that the engraving was printed on vellum paper, and that all impressions bear the estate stamp, Calapai’s chop mark, and were numbered. Rightmire also mentions that approximately 55 proofs were pulled, with five that do not include the above mentioned stamps. I have not seen all 50 of the prints though the one offered here is as described above.

In a December 20, 1980 letter to me, as director of The Rockwell Kent Legacies (successor to the late John Gorton), Calapai detailed which of Kent’s compositions he was commissioned to publish – Reveries in an edition of 50. During a visit to the Kent estate by Calapai and his wife in 1981, we – Sally and I – terminated any further printing of Kent’s works.