"I look at America’s heart—people, landscapes, and cityscapes—and I see it as an opportunity to add to an American art narrative."
— Amy Sherald

Tributes to the contemporary Black experience, Amy Sherald’s paintings of everyday African Americans subvert the conventional genre of portraiture to show a more complete picture of humanity. Her figures—in this case, two young bathers—gaze directly at us with a confident disposition that exudes timelessness, asserting their presence in a medium and traditional subject matter that has historically ostracized non-white artists and sitters. A rare image for Sherald in that it depicts two sitters, The Bathers is one of the finest works by the artist in private hands, showcasing her idiosyncratic aesthetic of fashionable gray-scaled figures represented against Barkley Hendricks-esque monochromatic expanse.

 

Nearly life-size, Sherald’s paintings such as The Bathers are typically hung low to the ground so that the figures’ faces are approached at eye level. “This creates the impression of meeting face to face, in an experience of mutual evaluation,” Roberta Smith expressed. “With the paintings given plenty of room, they invite close, exclusive looking, a kind of communion.”ⁱ 

Producing on average only 13 paintings each year, Sherald meticulously plans each aspect of her compositions. She first selects African Americans that she encounters in her everyday life—in grocery stores, on buses, on the street—who embody a certain je ne sais quoi that only Sherald can perceive. “When I choose my models,” the artist elucidated, “it’s something that only I can see in that person, in their face and their eyes, that’s so captivating about them.”ⁱⁱ 

 

However, she doesn’t always proceed immediately; Sherald takes down the stranger’s email address before sometimes waiting up to a year to begin the portrait. She then chooses the subject’s outfit—often from his or her own closet—and photographs the sitter outside in order to capture the effect of natural light on the textures of Black skin. Thinking intuitively about color and compositional balance, Sherald carefully decides how to represent each element—leading to slightly thicker applications of paint in some parts of The Bathers, such as the left woman’s hair bow and the right’s swim cap.

"I paint because I am looking for versions of myself in art history and in the world."
— Amy SheraldDuring a year spent studying under renowned Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum, Sherald learned the classical modelling technique of rendering figures in grisaille—or grayscale. This detail also points to her attraction to vintage black-and-white photography, a democratic medium that has the capacity to “narrate a truer history that counters a dominant historical narrative,” according to Sherald.ⁱⁱⁱ In short, it marks the moment when Black people—historically excluded from other forms of portraiture—became included in American visual culture. “Photography was the first medium I saw that made what was absent, visible,” she continued. “It gave people who once had no control over the proliferation of their own image the ability to become authors of their narratives.”^iv

Property from the Collection of Pamela K. and William A. Royall Jr.

 

The present work arrives at auction from the collection of pioneering Virginia-based philanthropists Pamela and William Royall, prominent collectors of 20^th century and contemporary art in the American South. The collection reflects their broad interests, from well-known artists from the 20^th century to emerging and established Black artists. Committed arts patrons and forces of change in Richmond, the Royalls spearhead the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’s recent acquisition of Kehinde Wiley’s sculpture Rumors of War as board members of the institution and were instrumental to the museum’s expansion of the diversity of its collection. Believing in a vision of greater inclusivity for Richmond, the Royalls established a non-profit art gallery for the collection, Try-me, which was open without charge to the public, which fostered a space for local artists and education. 

 

Collector’s Digest

 

• Sherald’s work has been subject to blossoming commercial and institutional interest since she was selected to paint former First Lady Michelle Obama’s official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C

 

• As a significant proportion of the artist’s paintings are already held in museum collections, only one of her paintings have been offered at auction, which soared above estimate to achieve $350,000 in 2019.

 

ⁱ Roberta Smith, “Amy Sherald’s Shining Second Act,” The New York Times, September 12, 2019, online.

ⁱⁱ Amy Sherald, quoted in Amy Sherald, exh. cat., Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2018, p. 14.

^{iii , iv} Amy Sherald, quoted in Hauser & Wirth, “Amy Sherald: the heart of the matter…,” press release, September 10, 2019.