Art Funded by you

Portrait of Melissa Thompson

Kehinde Wiley, 2020

Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of Melissa Thompson, 2020, V&A East, Art Funded 2021
© Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy Kehinde Wiley and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

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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