Kehinde Wiley’s painting, Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan (2018), is on view at the Timken Museum. On a loan from a prominent private collection in New York to the museum, this will be the first time Wiley is sharing the painting with the public in San Diego. The painting “Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan” is a 2015 reinterpretation of a 1634-1635 painting by Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck.
Image courtesy of Timken Museum.
Best known for his process of casting contemporary models of colour for his portraits which is then rendered in the traditional Old Master settings, Kehinde Wiley’s work combines art history with contemporary culture, using the visual rhetoric of the heroic, the magnificent, and the sublime to celebrate the people of colour he has met all around the world. His portraits have been known to challenge and realign art-historical narratives, bringing to light challenging topics that many would prefer to remain mute. Although Wiley rose to national recognition after his official portrait of President Obama, which was unveiled in 2018, he has been rewriting history and representation in art for nearly two decades.
Per the reports, the ‘Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan’ painting is huge and can be seen even from far across the Timken Museum.
“In a golden frame, on a vivid — almost psychedelic — botanical wallpaper-style background, a Black man wearing modern clothing rides a white horse. The horse is rearing up.”
– Dr. Fern Nelson, one of the San Diego Museum of African American Fine Art’s founding board members, says about the work.
“Putting large figures on horseback is something that goes back to antiquity, right? The Roman emperors put themselves on horses to make themselves look more like powerful leaders to the small people before them. And so Wiley is thinking about that history. He’s thinking about how he can alter it by putting in new figures and he’s also thinking about the politics of the United States. So, he’s quite deliberately incorporating these young, powerful, in this case, Black men, into this narrative of leadership,” says Derrick Cartwright, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Timken Museum.
Cartwright continues, “So putting large figures on horseback is something that goes back to antiquity, right? The Roman emperors put themselves on horses to make themselves look more like powerful leaders to the small people before them.“
Wiley’s painting will be on view at the Timken through May 2024.
