Rockwell Kent’s Illustrations For Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis

The Printing House of Leo Hart | About Rockwell Kent | About Venus & Adonis

In 1979, Mrs. Zelda Hart donated to the Memorial Art Gallery 21 photo-engravings from Rockwell Kent’s original drawings for Venus & Adonis, published by the Printing House of Leo Hart (Rochester, NY: 1931).

View images from Venus & Adonis.

The Printing House of Leo Hart

Kent designed the bookplate shown above, taken from the Charlotte Whitney Allen Library's copy of Venus & Adonis, which was donated to the Library by the family of Leo Hart.

The Hart Printing Company was established by Leo Hart in Rochester, New York in 1905. In the early years of the company, its chief business was commercial printing, but by the late 1920s, Leo Hart acted on a long-held desire to print beautiful books, and he created the Printing House of Leo Hart. Venus & Adonis was Rochesterian Leo Hart’s first venture in fine book publishing. Rockwell Kent was suggested to illustrate the work, and a friendship developed between the two.

In the personal correspondence between Kent and Hart, Kent wrote, "I have to compliment you on as fine a piece of printing as has ever been done in connection with work of mine." Fortunately for Hart and Kent, award-winning typographer and book designer Will Ransom was employed by the Hart Printing Company as supervisor, and oversaw nearly every detail of the project. 1175 copies were printed and bound with silk and leather covers, and an additional seventy-five copies were printed on hand-made paper and bound in leather, with an accompanying group of prints.

In 1932, the American Institute of Graphic Arts chose Venus & Adonis as one of the best fifty books of the year. The Institute’s exhibition travelled to the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester and to other museums across the country.

In the 1978 summer edition of the Kent Collector, Horace Hart, Leo Hart’s son, described his father’s company: "Its sole purpose was to print and publish beautiful books that would demonstrate the highest standards of literary content, design, typography, and printing." This first book and its accompanying prints, Venus & Adonis, accomplished just that.

The papers of the Leo Hart Printing Co. are located in the Rare Books Department of the University of Rochester Libraries.

Rockwell Kent (1882-1971)

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