Dong Kingman; Watercolor Painter of Whimsical Cityscapes

Dong Kingman, a watercolorist and illustrator whose often whimsical cityscapes are in the collections of several major museums, died Friday at his home in New York.

The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, his son Dong Kingman Jr. said. Kingman was 89.

Born in Oakland, the second of eight children, Kingman was raised in Hong Kong, where he began painting at age 5. He went on to study art and calligraphy before returning to the Bay Area at age 18 to continue his studies in art. Arriving in Depression-era America, he found work hard to come by and settled for a number of minor jobs, including dishwasher, newsboy and houseboy, to make ends meet.

Two years later he gave his first art exhibition, displaying 20 watercolors at the San Francisco Museum. Over the years, Kingman’s work, which one critic called “gentle satire, a satire with no sting,” would be added to the collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

After serving in the Army during World War II, Kingman taught at Columbia University and Hunter College in New York, and at the Famous Artists School in Westport, Conn.

Besides painting, Kingman worked in many other forms, creating posters for airlines, textile designs for sheets and towels and illustrations for magazines. He also illustrated children’s books and worked in film doing illustrations to set the mood for 1960s-era movies .

His first wife, Janice Wong, died in 1954. He married Helena Kuo in 1956. She died in 1999. In addition to Dong Kingman Jr., he is survived by another son, Eddie, four grandchildren and four sisters.