Rockwell Kent was born in Tarrytown Heights, New York. He studied architecture briefly at the University of Columbia in New York but found he was inclined to painting and at the age of 16 he studied landscape and marine painting under William Merritt Chase for two years. From 1903-1904 he attended the New York School of Art and studied under Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller. For the summer of 1903 he apprenticed under Abbott Thayer in Dublin, New Hampshire.

With a suggestion from Henri, Kent settled on the island of Monhegan, Maine, in 1905. It was on the island that Kent produced his first major works, mostly landscapes, over the span of five years. After travelling through Alaska in the late 1910s Kent wrote and illustrated his first book, Wilderness: A Journal of a Quiet Adventure in Alaska in 1920. By 1922 he travelled to Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago in South America, which inspired his second illustrated book in 1924, Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan.

It was in the mid-twenties that Kent became enamored with woodcutting and lithography and began illustrating classic literature. By the end of 1928 he had settled permanently in the Adirondack Mountains in his personally named farm, Asgaard. On his farm Kent wrote and illustrated his third novel, North by East in 1930. Kent had illustrated a total of twenty-three different works of literature including: Candide by Voltaire, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Beowulf (Scandinavian myth), and the complete works of William Shakespeare.

There are a number of murals that Rockwell Kent painted, designed, or both: Cape Cinema Murals, Dennis, Massachusetts; United States Post Office Department Headquarters, Washington D.C.; the 1939 World's Fair mural for the General Electric pavilion; "America at Peace," House Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. Capitol Complex, Washington D.C. Rockwell Kent's works can be found at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum; and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington.