Dong Kingman (, 31 March 1911 – 12 May 2000) was a

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...

artist and one of America's leading watercolor masters. As a painter on the forefront of the California Style School of painting, he was known for his urban and landscape paintings, as well as his graphic design work in the

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

film industry. He has won widespread critical acclaim and his works are included in over 50 public and private collections worldwide, including Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Brooklyn Museum; deYoung Museum and Art Institute, Chicago.

Overview

Dong Kingman was born Dong Moy Shu in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, the son of Chinese immigrants from

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. At the age of five and a half, he traveled with his family back to Hong Kong, where his father established a dry goods business. He began his formal education at the Bok Jai School, where he was given a school name in accordance with Chinese customs. Hearing that he aspired to be an artist, his instructor gave him the name "King Man" (lit. "scenery" and "composition" in

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...

). He would later combine the two names into Kingman, placing his family name first in accordance with Chinese naming conventions, creating the name Dong Kingman. Kingman continued his education at the Chan Sun Wen School, where he excelled at calligraphy and watercolor painting. He studied under Szeto Wai, the Paris-trained head of the Lingnan Academy. It was under Szeto's instruction that Kingman was first exposed to Northern European trends. Kingman would later state that Szeto was his "first and only true influence." Kingman returned to the United States in his late teens. In 1929 he attended the Fox Morgan Art School while holding down a variety of jobs. It was at this time that he chose to concentrate on watercolor painting. His critical breakthrough occurred in 1936, when he gained a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Art Association. This exhibition brought him national recognition and success. In the late 1930s, Kingman served as an artist in the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

, painting over 300 works with the relief program. In 1942 and 1944, Kingman received the

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, but was transferred to work as a map artist in the

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...

at Camp Beal, California and Washington, D.C, by a fan of his work,

Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...

. Kingman settled in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

after the war, where he held a position as an art instructor at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

from 1946 for the next ten years. In New York he was associated with Midtown, Wildenstein and Hammer galleries. Kingman had married Janice Wong in 1926. She died in 1954 and he married the writer

Helena Kuo Kuo Ching-ch'iu (; 1911 – April 25, 1999), also known as Helena Kuo, was a Chinese-American writer and translator. She was born in Macao and was educated at Lingnan University and Shanghai University. She worked for the ''Shanghai Evening News ...

in 1956. Kuo died in 1999. During the 1950s, Kingman served as a United States cultural ambassador and international lecturer for the

Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...

. In the 1950s and 1960s, Kingman worked as an illustrator in the film industry, designing the backgrounds for a number of major motion pictures including "

55 Days at Peking ''55 Days at Peking'' is a 1963 American epic historical war film dramatizing the siege of the foreign legations' compounds in Peking (now known as Beijing) during the Boxer Rebellion, which took place in China from 1899 to 1901. It was produc ...

", ''

The Sand Pebbles ''The Sand Pebbles'' is a 1962 novel by American author Richard McKenna about a Yangtze River gunboat and its crew in 1926. It was the winner of the 1963 Harper Prize for fiction. The book was initially serialized in the ''Saturday Evening Po ...

'' and the Hollywood adaptation of "

Flower Drum Song ''Flower Drum Song'' was the eighth musical by the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein. It is based on the 1957 novel, ''The Flower Drum Song'', by Chinese-American author C. Y. Lee. It premiered on Broadway in 1958 and was then performed in the ...

". Over 300 of his film-related works are permanently housed at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study at the Margaret Herrick Library of the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...

Beverly Hills, California Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. B ...

. Kingman was faculty at the

Famous Artists School Famous Artists School is an art Distance education, correspondence course institution, in operation since 1948. The school was founded by members of the New York Society of Illustrators, principally Albert Dorne and Norman Rockwell. History T ...

and his students included artists Win Pe and

Paw Oo Thet Paw Oo Thet ( my, ပေါ်ဦးသက်, ; 1936 – 13 April 1993) was a Burmese painter, prominent in the Mandalay art scene who became one of the initiators of a modernistic art movement in Burma in the early 1960s. Early training ...

, among others. In 1981, Kingman made history as the first American artist to be featured in a solo exhibition following the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China when the Ministry of Culture of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

hosted a critically acclaimed exhibition that drew over 100,000 people. The 1990s saw major exhibitions in Taiwan at the

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

Modern Art Museum in 1995 and the

Taichung Taichung (, Wade–Giles: ''Tʻai²-chung¹'', pinyin: ''Táizhōng''), officially Taichung City, is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Taiw ...

Provincial Museum in 1999. Dong Kingman died of pancreatic cancer in his home in New York City in 2000, at age 89.http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/17/local/me-31122 Dong Kingman; Watercolor Painter of Whimsical Cityscapes

Documentary

The 2011

Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) – formerly known as VC FilmFest – is an annual film festival presented by Visual Communications (VC). It was established in 1983 by Linda Mabalot as a vehicle to promote Asian Pacific Ameri ...

featured a unique interactive presentation of James Wong Howe's 1953 Dong Kingman film documentary.

Partial list of awards and honors

*San Francisco Art Association First Purchase Prize, 1936. *Chicago Art Institute International Watercolor Exhibition Award, 1941. *Guggenheim Fellowships, 1941 and 1942. *Audubon Artists Medal of Honor, 1946. *National Academy of Design, elected associate 1946. Received academy competition awards in 1963, 1971, 1975, 1977, including the 150th Anniversary Gold Medal Award. *Philadelphia Watercolor Club competition awards, 1950 and 1968. *American Watercolor Society competition awards, 1956, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1972, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997. *American Watercolor Society Dolphin Medal Award, 1987. *Metropolitan Museum of Art Award, 1953. *Pennsylvania Academy of Art Award, 1953. *U.S. Department of State International Cultural Exchange, 1954. *Audubon Artists Award, 1958. *San Diego Art Gallery Award, 1968 *Detroit Museum Award *Academy of Art College San Francisco Honorary Doctorate for Human Letters, 1987.

References

External links

www.dongkingman.org
nbsp;— Dong Kingman official site *
"Dong Kingman"
nbsp;— 1954 film by James Wong Howe at the Internet Archive
Dong Kingman papers circa 1961-1975
Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences {{DEFAULTSORT:Kingman, Dong 20th-century American painters American male painters Artists from Oakland, California American artists of Chinese descent Columbia University faculty Hunter College faculty 1911 births 2000 deaths People of the Office of Strategic Services Federal Art Project artists 20th-century American male artists

Overview

Documentary

Partial list of awards and honors

References

Further reading

Articles

Books

External links