Kinstler, Everett Raymond - The World Around Us, issue 16, The Illustrated History of the Crusades - The Red Lion, page 23 (Dec 1959)

I’m not sure how often original comic art and Presidential portraiture cross over, but they do so in a big way when it comes to Everett Raymond Kinstler (August 5, 1926 – May 26, 2019). After dropping out of high school and beginning his career at the age of sixteen by drawing comic books (he’d work his first 12 years for all sorts of comic book publishers and would work on titles such as Space Detective and Hawkman), he migrated to painting paperback covers and illustrating for magazines before eventually settling into becoming one of our nation’s foremost portrait painters.

Among Kinstler’s more than 3,000 portraits of celebrities, business tycoons, cabinet officers and eight presidents (his portraits of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan are the official White House portraits of each) are such well-known personalities as Tony Bennett (his high school friend and best man at his second wedding), 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, six U.S. Governors, four U.S. Secretaries of State, and the presidents of universities and colleges including Brown, Harvard, Oklahoma, Princeton, Smith, Wellesley, Williams and Yale. That all may sound really impressive, but the coolest thing about this portraiture giant is that his influences included Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff and Hal Foster!

Anyway, shown here is the second page of a story he illustrated for an 8-page chapter in the Gilberton Company's The World Around Us: The Illustrated History of the Crusades (issue #16). You may recognize Gilberton as the publisher of Classics Illustrated, but they also published The World Around Us (1958-1961), which told the illustrated history of such broad topics as American Presidents, dogs, Indians, Vikings, railroads, space, flight, the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard, great scientists, etc. This issue, originally cover-dated December 1959, featured 'The Illustrated Story of the Crusades' and depicted Christian crusaders sailing from Greece to attack ‘Moslem cities' in Turkey. The art is very evocative of Prince Valiant with ancient galleys, huge battles and knights in armor. The pages are twice-up with an image area of approximately 13 x 18 on a larger piece of two-ply Bristol board.

Of particular note on these pages, each one of them is signed by Kinstler along with what seem like cheeky notes to the first owner that the pages passed to, a gentleman named Raymond V. This page’s note reads –

‘For Raymond V. – the fortress above later became ‘Sardis’ on 44th Street NYC – Ray K.’

This note seems particularly cheeky; Sardis was an ancient city in Turkey and the capital of the kingdom of Lydia, one of the more important cities of the Persian Empire due to its location on important roads leading from the Aegean coast to the country’s interior. It sat south and west of where the city of Nicea (referenced on the page) sits, but Kinstler uses it to make a pun about something that sounds like Sardi’s in NYC, where Raymond V. & Kinstler both lived.

Sardi's is a restaurant located at 234 West 44th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, in the Theater District of Manhattan. The restaurant opened on March 5, 1927 and is known for the hundreds of caricatures of Broadway celebrities on its walls. I think it's a safe assumption that Kinstler had frequented the restaurant – at the very least, he chose a place easily known to all New Yorkers of the time.

Overall, a really fascinating piece of history. Thanks, Wally – always a pleasure!