In 1954, a White House appointments secretary named Thomas E. Stephens distributed paint-by-numbers kits to senior officials under president Dwight Eisenhower, who sometimes gave such kits to Oval ...

In his 1998 memoir, Whatever Happened to Paint-By-Numbers?, Robbins recalls, “Max gave each of the reps $250, telling them to hand it out to friends, relatives, neighbors, anyone that would be ...

Robbins’s 1954 re-creation of Leonardo’s The Last Supper remains the most popular paint-by-numbers kit ever made. Critics were withering, claiming that the kits were promoting kitsch as art.