EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER is a native New Yorker who began his career at age 16, drawing comic books and hundreds of book and magazine illustrations, as well as covers for paper back books. As one of the “golden age” era of comic book artists, his illustrations for magazines, including The Shadow and Doc Savage, have influenced the pop art school.
He studied at the Art Students League, where he later taught from 1969 to 1974. Kinstler ultimately made the transition to portraitist, and soon established himself as one of the nation’s foremost portrait painters. For over four decades, Kinstler also has devoted time to painting landscapes and watercolors.
Among Kinstler’s more than 3,000 portraits are such well-known personalities as Tony Bennett, Carol Burnett, James Cagney, Betty Ford, Gene Hackman, Katharine Hepburn, Lady Bird Johnson, Paul Newman, Peter O’Toole, Gregory Peck, and John Wayne. Others include authors Arthur Miller, Ayn Rand, Tennessee Williams, and Tom Wolfe; Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harry Blackmun; business and government leaders such as John D. Rockefeller lll, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 6 U.S. Governors, four US Secretaries of State, and the presidents of universities and colleges including Brown, Harvard, Oklahoma, Princeton, Smith, Wellesley, Williams, and Yale.
Kinstler has painted more than 50 cabinet officers, more than any artist in the country’s history. Eight Presidents — Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald J. Trump (before he was president) — have posed for him. His portraits of Ford and Reagan are the official White House portraits.
He was awarded honorary doctorates by Rollins College in 1983, the Lyme Academy College of Art in 2002, and The Academy of Art University in San Francisco in 2011. The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., has acquired 75 of his original works for its permanent collection. He is also represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, etc.
Memberships include: National Academy of Design (N.A.), Allied Artists of America, American Watercolor Society, Pastel Society of America (Hall of Fame), Audubon Artists, Copley Society of Boston (life), National Arts Club.
In 1999, Kinstler received the Copley Medal from the Smithsonian, National Portrait Gallery, its highest honor.
Many PBS stations are airing a recent documentary on his career.
Recent portrait commissions include Tony Bennett, Donald Trump, Sandy Weill (Weill-Cornell Medical Center), Tommy Lasorda for the National Portrait Gallery, Christopher Plummer, the official City Hall portrait of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
