How could these luminaries of culture be connected? The answer is via artist Richard Banks (1929-1995)! Banks started his career in art sketching shoes alongside Andy Warhol. After studying at the Arts Students League he specialized, among other genres, in portraiture.

Many of a certain age may remember the episode of The Beverly Hillbillies when Granny believes that actress, Gloria Swanson, is being evicted from her home as silent pictures were no longer popular. Granny sees a mover taking out a portrait of Miss Swanson and intervenes to save it. This portrait was by then popular portraitist, Richard Banks. In reality, there were two portraits of Swanson by Banks, although one was featured in the popular tv series.

With his growing recognition as a society portrait artist, the Kennedys commissioned him to paint Kennedy matriarch, Rose. Although we will never know how much they paid him, Banks assured those who asked that “he was VERY satisfied” with his remuneration.

It is no surprise that Banks was chosen by alias Evgenia Smetisko, sometimes Eugenia Smith, sometimes Eugenie Smith, while insisting that she was at the same time the veritable HIH Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov, Grand Duchess of Russia. This full-size portrait is now in the collection of the author of GRAND DUCHESS ANASTASIA: STILL A MYSTERY? (histriabooks.com/product/grand-duchess-anastasia)

Banks credited his painting of Rose Kennedy to have been his most important portrait. Having died in 1965, he would not know that his portrait of HIH Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov, may well eclipse both the paintings of Rose Kennedy and Gloria Swanson, a fact which would have earned the envy of Banks’ colleague, Andy Warhol.

Above a short bio of Richard Banks, below his obituary: