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Column: Presidential Portrait Painter Everett Kinstler Going Strong at 90

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By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Columnist

Linda Lowry Newsom, as painted by Everett Raymond Kinstler.
Linda Lowry Newsom, as painted by Everett Raymond Kinstler.

Renowned presidential portrait painter Everett Raymond Kinstler and I shared something rare—a friendship with the late Linda Lowry Newsom. We reconnected the day before Thanksgiving when Everett journeyed from his Easton home to attend Linda’s memorial service at Christ Church Greenwich. Everett was pleasantly surprised to see his watercolor of Linda as program cover for her memorial service.

He recalled back in the 1980’s Linda coming to his Gramercy Park studio in New York when she needed PR images for her acting career. “I took some photos of her and did some pencil sketches and the watercolor of her. It’s very like her. It’s fresh. It was a moment. I’m glad my name was on it.”

Following up with Everett after the service, I found him as ebullient as ever. Never mind that he’s 90 now and still holds forth in his historic studio at the National Arts Club. He was full of news. Had I seen his portrait of President-elect Donald Trump? What, already? No, done six years ago, but just now making headlines in the “Daily Beast.”

It was Everett’s buddy Tony Bennett who placed him with paintbrush before Donald Trump. “Tony commissioned me to do a portrait of Donald Trump to give him as a gift.” The threesome met up in Tony Bennett’s small studio in his apartment in a Trump Tower on Central Park South. “All the while Tony was sketching Donald, I was painting him,” said Everett.

So what was Everett willing to share of their discourse—any outlandish anecdotes?

Some movie star talk, “Sophia Loren and Cary Grant.” Everett has known them all and painted a slew of them: John Wayne, James Cagney, Paul Newman, Katharine Hepburn, and yes, Mary Tyler Moore of Greenwich.

Trump also talked of artists. “Was Norman Rockwell any good?” he asked Everett.

“He was a damned genius,” Everett told him.

Everett has a healthy respect for illustrators who became painters. He spent his teenaged years doing comic book illustrations and action strips. He did not know Jerry Dumas, who we recently lost, but he did know John Cullen Murphy of Prince Valiant and Cos Cob fame. “John was a very sweet man,” recalls Everett. “He knew my work—we shared a lot of things.”

Everett is still in shock over Trump’s election. “I would never have believed he would become the president-elect,” he said. “He was a builder and an entrepreneur!”

Former President George H.W. Bush, Capitol Hill Club. Washington, D.C.
Former President George H.W. Bush, Capitol Hill Club. Washington, D.C.

Everett is a connoisseur of high profile people in government. He’s painted every president from Gerald Ford to Clinton—his portraits of Ford and Reagan are official portraits residing in the White House. “It’s a freak thing to have painted so many,” he said. “Usually when you’ve painted a president, you don’t get another one—the next president wants a different painter.”

He’s painted over 60 cabinet officers and is presently painting Gen. Joseph Dunford of the U.S. Marine Corps, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But he also busies his paintbrush capturing financial titans like Sumner Redstone of Viacom; hedge funder Julian Robertson, chairman of Tiger Management; and family members of Westport-based Daniel Bernstein, a partner of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund.

He got his start, after all, in his twenties, painting Mars Bar magnate Forrest Mars, Jr. “He just died this year,” said Everett. “He was worth 47 billion dollars.” (That’s a lot of Mars Bars.)

He painted a charming portrait of a young Barbara Netter and husband Ed Netter, Greenwich philanthropists and co-founders of the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy. Everett adds, “They funded in honor of their cousin the Frank Netter M.D. School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University. He was the Michelangelo of medical illustrators.”

So, if he had to name a common element in all the VIP’s he’s painted, what would it be?

“They never lost their touch of where they came from,” he said quickly. “What you saw of them is what they were.” And that includes Katherine Hepburn of Old Saybrook, a favorite of Everett’s. “She had the common touch. She never forgot where she came from.”

Another favorite was President Gerald Ford. “He was one of the most decent men I’ve ever met.”

And to what would he attribute his success as a painter, I ask Everett. “Charm and good looks,” he quipped. Then he added quite soberly, “From the age of 15 I’ve worked hard all my life. I’ve been very lucky.”

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