An Artist Transcends the Boundaries

T
t o day ’s m a s t e r s ™
Everett Raymond Kinstler
An Artist Transcends the Boundaries
BY PETER TRIPPI
I
GH
n planning an exhibition of paintings by a renowned portraitist like Everett Raymond Kinstler (b. 1926), it would be simple
for a museum curator to just hang three dozen likenesses of famous
sitters and watch the public stream in to relish both the celebrities and
Kinstler’s skill. Fortunately, the show on view through September 28 at
Fairfield University’s Bellarmine Museum of Art in Connecticut, Everett
Raymond Kinstler: Pulp to Portraits, goes well beyond to show visitors
how these portraits evolved organically from Kinstler’s earlier work as
an illustrator. It makes sense that the exhibition originated, in a larger
form, at one of illustration’s key pilgrimage sites, the Norman Rockwell
Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where it was curated by Martin
Mahoney and accompanied by a handsome catalogue featuring an essay
by the noted scholar of American art William H. Gerdts. Bellarmine
Burr Staggered Through the High Snow
1949, Ink on paper, 19 x 28 in.
Illustration for Adventure Magazine, Issue #470
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director Jill Deupi’s decision to show these 33 paintings and drawings at
Fairfield makes additional sense, since Ray Kinstler lives and works just
10 miles away, in Easton, Connecticut.
WITNESS TO THE GOLDEN AGE
Although illustration is booming in America today in the form of
graphic novels, ’zines, and children’s books, its vitality pales when compared with the Golden Age of American Illustration (1880-1920). That
era was dominated by such household names as N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield
Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, and Dean Cornwell, whose images exerted a
powerful influence on Hollywood, which was also — and still is — in
the business of telling stories to a broad public. In the 1940s and 1950s,
young Kinstler enjoyed the waning, though still fairly heady, years of
Women in Love
1955, Oil on canvas, 14 x 10 in.
Book jacket illustration for Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
Kinstler notes that another key influence was the artist-teacher
Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1951), with whom he studied parttime in 1945 at the Art Students League of New York (where he himself would later teach). It was DuMond who “taught me to see and
observe,” Kinstler recalls, and it was also DuMond who, in 1949, enabled the young man to rent a studio in the famous National Arts Club
building, where he still works today. As for any young person in any
field, mentoring was crucial for Kinstler; his remarkable role models live on in lively portraits in various media not only of DuMond,
but also of Rockwell, Howard Chandler Christy, Sidney Dickinson
(1890-1980), and — most importantly — James Montgomery Flagg
(1877-1960), the illustrator who gave us Uncle Sam, among other
icons. The National Arts Club was a magnet for these and other talents, and among those Kinstler got to sketch in charcoal there were
Salvador Dalí and Leonard Bernstein.
FROM A MASS MARKET TO A CUSTOM ONE
In the late 1950s, commercial illustrators were losing their jobs rapidly due to the growing impact of photography, graphic design, and television. Given his experiences depicting a constellation of stars, it was only
logical for Kinstler to approach Portraits, Inc., which had been established
in 1942 as a way of bringing portraitists and sitters together. His first commission came on the occasion of the 25th birthday of Forrest E. Mars,
Jr., whose family manufactures M&Ms and other popular candies, and
apparently both parties liked the experience; Kinstler went on to paint the
entire Mars family, and indeed more than 2,000 portraits in total.
this Golden Age by illustrating book covers, comics, and, most crucially, the pulps — fiction magazines printed on low-cost, wood-pulp
paper, and rife with adult themes of bodice-ripping romance, fantasy,
crime, horror, and warfare, not to mention superheroes and science
fiction.
His success in this sector fulfilled Kinstler’s own boyhood dream:
growing up in New York City, he had always loved drawing and copying from such comic strips as Flash Gordon and Tarzan. Given full support by his parents, he was admitted at the tender age of 13 to New
York City’s famous High School of Music and Art. There his desire to
study illustration was frowned upon, so Kinstler soon transferred to the
more suitable High School of Industrial Art. Yet he stayed there only
six months, departing at the legally permissible age of 16. He joined
Cinema Comics as an apprentice “inker,” completing 180 comic strip
panels per week.
As if this job were not immersive enough, the youngster also
worked as a freelancer, drawing panels for such famous series as Doc
Savage, The Shadow, Hawkman, and Zorro. Not surprisingly, when he
was drafted in 1945, Kinstler was put to work drawing the U.S. Army
newspaper’s own comic strip. Though he admired many of the gifted
illustrators working all over New York then, Kinstler says he also consulted outstanding historical examples of illustration, particularly those
of the late-19th-century masters Edwin Austin Abbey, Gustave Doré,
Adolf Menzel, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
The Sea Witch
1958, Ink and gouache on paper, 17 x 14 in.
Illustration for The Sea Witch by Alexander Laing, 25th-anniversary edition
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Portrait Study of Katharine Hepburn
1982, Oil on cardboard, 27 x 21 in.
In contrast to having to imagine the psychology of, say, Doc Savage, Kinstler gets to know his sitters as he paints them, closely observing
their character, relaxing them with his infectious sense of humor, and
sometimes consulting reference photographs after several live poses.
Without ever resorting to a template, somehow
he always brings them alive as individuals through
carefully calculated poses and compositions,
psychological insight, deft coloring, and lively
brushwork, all derived in part from his lifelong
admiration of the elegant informality conveyed
by William Merritt Chase and John Singer Sargent, whose portraits found that same sweet spot
between proper and casual.
No matter how experienced and confident
Kinstler may have become painting the great and
the good, portraiture is never truly easy because
— as Gerdts notes in his catalogue essay — the
sitter always has a (sometimes unwelcome) opinion to register about the final product. The number of Kinstler’s satisfied clients speaks for itself,
however, and it would seem that becoming the
subject of his next canvas is virtually a career
requirement for America’s university presidents,
Portrait of Liv Ullmann
1984, Oil on canvas, 32 x 38 in.
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Morning, Portugal
1990, Oil on canvas, 34 x 44 in.
Portrait of Paul Jenkins
2006, Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 in.
captains of industry, astronauts, and leading
politicians. Among his sitters have been every
U.S. president from Richard Nixon to George W.
Bush; the musicians Tony Bennett, Dave Brubeck,
and Benny Goodman; the actors Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Christopher Plummer, John
Wayne, James Cagney, José Ferrer, and Liv Ullmann; the writers Tom Wolfe and Dr. Seuss; and
his fellow artists Will Barnet, Romare Bearden,
Alexander Calder, and Jacob Lawrence.
Although his activities in both illustration
and portraiture have been profitable and widely
recognized, Ray Kinstler has been unfortunate
in just one respect: to live in an era when both
of these disciplines are generally disdained by
scholars and curators of “fine” art. The boundaries drawn among these genres by academe in the
middle of the 20th century no longer make sense,
Portrait Study of President William Jefferson Clinton
1995-97, Oil on canvas, 52 x 62 in.
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Movies: The Twenties
2011, Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 in.
because visual culture has become so thoroughly interconnected. Now,
when the same museum exhibits a painting by Titian and a giant fiberglass
puppy sculpture by Jeff Koons, excluding contemporary realist portraits
and historic comic books is simply illogical. Reversing this prejudice is a
slow process, though it was certainly advanced by the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s successful presentation of Rockwell masterworks owned
by the film producers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (2010), as well
as by the Norman Rockwell Museum’s launch in 2009 of the nation’s first
research institute devoted to the art of illustration.
In the meantime, Kinstler continues to accept portrait commissions,
but is spending considerable time on an innovative, non-commissioned
series of large oils inspired by the history of film. The example illustrated
here, Movies: The Twenties, reflects Kinstler’s unique understanding of the
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connections between illustration, film, and realist painting of the past and
present. In America, few art forms are as beloved and evocative as movies,
so it will be intriguing to see how this new initiative is received by collectors
and curators in the years ahead. In the meantime, be sure to enjoy the retrospective now on view at Fairfield’s Bellarmine Museum of Art. n
PETER TRIPPI is editor of Fine Art Connoisseur.
Information: 1073 N. Benson Road, Fairfield, CT 06824-5195, 203.254.4046,
fairfield.edu/erk
All works illustrated here are from the collection of Everett Raymond Kinstler.