
American artist Kehinde Wiley completed this portrait in 2020 as one of a series of six paintings titled The Yellow Wallpaper, made for an exhibition at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, east London.
Wiley, who painted the official portrait of President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, is known for his depictions of young Black men inspired by Old Master paintings.
For The Yellow Wallpaper, he invited local Black women and girls to sit for their portraits after scouting for subjects in Ridley Road Market, east London. The aim, he has said, ‘is to use the language of the decorative to reconcile blackness, gender, and a beautiful and terrible past’.
The Yellow Wallpaper takes its title from a short story of 1892 by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The narrative concerns a woman who becomes obsessed by the wallpaper in an attic room to which she has been confined by her husband. Only by scraping off the paper does she believe she can free herself.
Wiley has used William Morris designs as backdrops in his portraits for more than 15 years. The pattern in Portrait of Melissa Thompson is Morris & Co’s Wild Tulip. Morris’s daughter, May Morris, is known to have become friends with Gilman after they met at an International Socialist Conference in London in 1896.
Portrait of Melissa Thompson joins the V&A, where work by Morris and his contemporaries features in the collection. The acquisition builds on the V&A’s growing body of work by Black artists and designers.
More information
Title of artwork, date
Portrait of Melissa Thompson, 2020
Date supported
2021
Medium and material
Oil on linen
Dimensions
265.5 x 201.8 cm
Grant
86000
Total cost
191417

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