Toledo, Ohio • Dan Robbins, an artist who created the first paint-by-numbers pictures and helped turn the kits into an American sensation during the 1950s, has died. He was 93.
Robbins, whose works were dismissed by some critics but later celebrated by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, died Monday in Sylvania, Ohio, said his son, Larry Robbins.
He had been in good health until a series of falls in recent months, his son said.
Robbins was working as a package designer for the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit when he came up with the idea for paint-by-numbers in the late 1940s.