Everett Raymond Kinstler
American, 1926 - 201919th Street, ca. 1960
Not on view
Oil on canvas
Dimensions24 × 43 in. (61 × 109.2 cm)
Gift of the National Academy of Design, 1971.31
Everett Raymond Kinstler began his artistic career early in life, drawing comic strips at the age of sixteen and went on to produce hundreds of magazine illustrations and book covers. He studied at the Art Students League and made the transition from illustrator to portraitist, and soon established himself as one of America’s foremost portrait artists. Kinstler painted from life over twenty United States Cabinet Members, as well as the official White House portrait of former President Gerald Ford.
Known primarily for his portraiture, Kinstler excelled at landscape painting, as we see here in this rare example of his work. Free from the requirements of portraiture, to faithfully reproduce a naturalistic likeness of his sitter, the artist describes this storefront with a more casual, looser brushstroke. The figures are incidental, and contribute merely as “still life” elements to this slice-of-life urban scene.
