Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art co-acquire Kehinde Wiley's "Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite"

NEW HAVEN, CT (November 10, 2021) — The Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art have co-acquired Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite (2017) by Kehinde Wiley, who graduated from the Yale School of Art in 2001. This is the first time that the Gallery and the Center have jointly purchased an artwork. It is also the first acquisition of a painting by Wiley for both museums.

“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.

Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite depicts the contemporary British artist Yiadom-Boakye in full length and at over life-size scale, outfitted as a huntress and posed in a verdant English landscape. Wiley was inspired by the landscape elements of the British artist George Romney’s eighteenth-century portrait of the young aristocrat Jacob Morland and his hound (now in the collection of the Tate Britain, in London). Wiley’s reinterpretation of the scene replaces the figure of the white male, Morland, with that of Yiadom-Boakye, a Black artist.

At the Center, the portrait of Yiadom-Boakye builds on Wiley’s ongoing dialogue with British painting traditions, providing a contemporary commentary that creates a new history of portraiture for our times. In the Gallery’s collection, Wiley’s painting joins works by other living artists who share his interest in placing Black figures within contexts of American and European art that have thus far excluded them.

“Wiley has firmly established himself as one of the foremost contemporary portraitists by responding to the past contributions of painters,” shared Martina Droth, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Yale Center for British Art. “As a hybrid of the genres of portraiture and landscape, our newly acquired painting resonates not just with other portraits but with many historical works of art across both museums’ collecting areas.”

Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite is part of Wiley’s Trickster series from 2017 that pays tribute to some of the most influential and important artists working today, including Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu (Yale MFA 2000), Mickalene Thomas (Yale MFA 2002), and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. This portrait series is at once exemplary of the highly precise style for which Wiley is now famous yet departs from his typical practice of painting anonymous sitters. In the Center and the Gallery’s newly acquired painting, Wiley retains the landscape setting but changes the figure’s pose from the historical source.

“In addition to its merits as an unusual and effective example of his work, Wiley’s portrait of Yiadom-Boakye stands as a meaningful tribute from one painter to another,” noted Keely Orgeman, Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. “We hope it will hold particular significance for Yale’s community of artists.”

Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite is on display at the Center through 2021. It has been on loan from the artist and Sean Kelly, New York, since October 2019 on the occasion of an exhibition of Yiadom-Boakye’s work curated by writer Hilton Als. The painting will soon thereafter be displayed at the Gallery.

About the Yale University Art Gallery

Founded in 1832, the Yale University Art Gallery is the oldest college art museum in America. Today, it is a center for teaching, learning, and scholarship and a preeminent cultural asset for Yale University, the wider academic community, and the public. The museum collects, preserves, studies, and presents art in all media, from all regions of the globe and across time, with a collection numbering nearly 300,000 objects. Visit the Gallery at artgallery.yale.edu and connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube @yaleartgallery.

About the Yale Center for British Art

The Yale Center for British Art is a museum that houses the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom, encompassing works in a range of media from the fifteenth century to the present. It offers a vibrant program of events and exhibitions year-round both in person and online. Opened to the public in 1977, the Center’s core collection and landmark building—designed by architect Louis I. Kahn—were a gift to Yale University from the collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class of 1929). Visit the Center at britishart.yale.edu, and connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube @yalebritishart.

About Kehinde Wiley

Wiley, born in Los Angeles in 1977, is a world-renowned visual artist best known for his vibrant portrayals of contemporary African-American and African-Diasporic individuals that subvert the hierarchies and conventions of European and American portraiture. Working in the mediums of painting, sculpture, and video, Wiley’s portraits challenge and reorient art-historical narratives, awakening complex sociopolitical issues that many would prefer remain muted.

In 2018, Wiley became the first African-American artist to paint an official US presidential portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Former US President Barack Obama selected Wiley for this honor. Wiley is the recipient of the US Department of State’s Medal of Arts, Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, and France’s distinction of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters . He holds a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute, an MFA from Yale University, and honorary doctorates from the Rhode Island School of Design and San Francisco Art Institute. He has held solo exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally and his works are included in the collections of more than sixty public institutions around the world. Wiley is the Founder and President of Black Rock Senegal. He lives and works in Dakar, Lagos, and New York.