Greenland Swimmer, a wood engraving

Greenland Swimmer, 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 100 by Letterio Calapai, with the permission of the Kent estate, in January, 1975.

Greenland Swimmer measures 5 3/8 x 6 15/16 inches and is printed on rice paper. This print is estate stamped lower right and bears Calapai’s chop mark lower left. Calapai has numbered this print 17/100.

In an entry for Greenland Swimmer, in The Prints of Rockwell Kent: A Catalogue Raisonné, by Dan Burne Jones (number 90), he states that the image was “unpublished. Only three or four trial proofs were made by the artist.”

The print is illustrated in the revised edition of the Burne Jones book (by Robert Rightmire) in Appendix 1, “Posthumous Prints,” #P10. In Rightmire’s entry he states that Calapai printed an approximate edition of 105 (five bearing just the printer’s chop mark), the engraving was printed on vellum paper, and that all (100) impressions bear the estate stamp, Calapai’s chop mark, and were numbered. I have not seen all 100 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 – Greenland Swimmer in an edition of 100. 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.