Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has been acquired by the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, marking the first time the museums have jointly bought a work. It is also the first acquisition of a painting by Wiley, who graduated from the Yale School of Art in 2001.
Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite (2017) depicts Yiadom-Boakye on a life-size scale. In it, she is outfitted in traditional English hunting garb, rifle in hand. At her feet are five dead hares, and behind her extends a lush green landscape. The work is a reinterpretation of British artist George Romney’s 1763 portrait of the aristocrat Jacob Morland that is now in the collection of London’s Tate Britain.
“My work is highly inflected by the tradition of Western easel portrait painting and with specific emphasis on the British school. Through my time at Yale I was drawn into the language and history of power—its negotiation, its use, and its potential promise for Black figurative painting, as is exemplified in the body of work titled Trickster. Lynette’s portrait takes its cues directly from the tradition of British hunting portraits and evokes a new sensibility, temperature, and cultural logic with regards to the Black female body in hallowed space,” said Wiley.
The painting is part of Wiley’s “Trickster” series, which establishes a pantheon of some of the most prominent contemporary Black artists. Also depicted in that series are Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Derrick Adams, and Carrie Mae Weems. Each artist is shown in the grand style of court portraiture, with dramatic lighting and hauteur.
The portrait will be on view through 2021 at the Yale Center for British Art, after which it will travel to the Yale University Art Gallery.