News Release - Kehinde Wiley's "Portrait of a Young Gentleman" Revealed Today

Exhibition on view Oct. 2, 2021–Jan. 3, 2022 | Huntington Art Gallery

SAN MARINO, Calif.— Visitors get a first look at Kehinde Wiley's A Portrait of a Young Gentleman today as it makes its world debut at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. The institution's newly commissioned work reconceives its famous painting The Blue Boy (ca. 1770) by Thomas Gainsborough in a contemporary context. The work is now on view through Jan. 3, 2022, opposite the recently restored Gainsborough icon. The acquisition of the Wiley portrait celebrates the 100th anniversary of the purchase of The Blue Boy by Henry and Arabella Huntington, the institution's founders.

“Just as scholars come to The Huntington to study and reinterpret our significant collections, with this commission we are delighted that Kehinde Wiley has reenvisioned our iconic work, The Blue Boy, and Grand Manner portraiture in a powerful way,” said Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence. “Across the breadth of our library, art, and botanical collections, we are inviting perspectives that alter the way we see tradition itself.”

Wiley has long talked about the role The Huntington played in his formative years as an artist growing up in Los Angeles. When he was young, his mother enrolled him in art classes at The Huntington, where he encountered a formidable collection of Grand Manner portraits—large-scale depictions of England’s 18th- and 19th-century noble class. The portraits made such an impression on Wiley that he would later incorporate their stylistic representations of wealth, glory, and power into his own artistic practice, focusing on the Black and brown bodies missing from the museums he visited.

“I loved The Huntington’s galleries; the paintings by Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and John Constable were some of my favorites,” Wiley said. “I was taken by their imagery, their sheer spectacle, and, of course, their beauty. When I started painting, I started looking at their technical proficiency—the manipulation of paint, color, and composition. These portraits are hyperreal, with the detail on the face finely crafted, and the brushwork, the clothing, and the landscape fluid and playful. Since I felt somewhat removed from the imagery—personally and culturally—I took a scientific approach and had an aesthetic fascination with these paintings. That distance gave me a removed freedom. Later, I started thinking about issues of desire, objectification, and fantasy in portraiture and, of course, colonialism.”

Wiley painted A Portrait of a Young Gentleman in Senegal, where he has been living during the COVID-19 pandemic and where Black Rock Senegal, his artist-in-residence program, is headquartered.