Exhibition Guide

Visual Description

[Narrator] This work is a vertical oil on linen portrait of Breonna Taylor, a twenty-six-year-old emergency room technician who was killed in March of 2020 by police officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department who forced entry into her home. “Vanity Fair” commissioned Amy Sherald to create this portrait of Taylor for its September 2020 issue, which was guest edited by the author Ta-Nehisi Coates. Taylor stands centered in the frame facing forward with one hand on her hip in front of a solid turquoise background visible from head to just below her knee. She wears a dress of a darker turquoise hue.  

As in Sherald’s other portraits, skin tone is represented in grey scale, but here there is a warmer glow in the tinted surfaces of Taylor’s skin that have the effect of pulling her into the foreground out of the flat background. Taylor’s face is at rest without a smile but with a slight wrinkle under her lower eyelids suggesting comfort, satisfaction, or affection. Highlights catch the fullness of her lips, as if she is wearing a light coat of lipstick or gloss. Her thick hair is styled in soft waves that fall just over her shoulder. A single teardrop earring set with turquoise peeks from under her hair. A delicate gold chain sits just under Taylor’s clavicle, with light glinting off the chain’s links. A simple, fine cross pendant gleams on the center of her chest framed by the V-neck of her dress that comes to a point just below a small amount of exposed cleavage. The dress slopes off of Taylor’s shoulder’s opening into wide yet simple structured sleeves. The folds of fabric bunch into a wide waistband, showing that the fabric has both lightweight and sculptural qualities that give the dress a fashionable drape around Taylor’s body. Two slits open in the dress at the front of either of her legs, appearing to be moved gently to the right by a breeze. Taylor’s right hand sits on her hip with four fingers forward and her thumb wrapping back out of view. Her other arm rests along the side of her left thigh, extended fingertips grazing an open slit. She wears an engagement ring on her ring finger. Artist Amy Sherald speaks about her decision to paint this engagement ring. 

[Amy Sherald] Breonna was to be engaged in a couple of weeks. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had purchased an engagement ring that she didn’t know about. And at that point I knew that I had to include that part of her life and love story in the work by including her engagement ring. 

 

Artwork Label

When writer and activist Ta-Nehisi Coates (born Baltimore, MD 1975) was commissioned to guest-edit the September 2020 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, he invited Sherald to memorialize Breonna Taylor for its cover. Sherald created this painting in the summer of 2020, during the historic protests that erupted after Taylor was shot and killed by police in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, and George Floyd was killed by police just two months later in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Taylor was a vivacious 26-year-old, loved by family and friends and building a career as an emergency medical technician. Her life story and the horrific circumstances of her death at the hands of police became known around the world. She remains a galvanizing symbol of the devastating impact on a family and community of a life lost, as well as the ongoing toll of racism, gun violence, and excessive force on the American social fabric.

With her hand on her hip, Breonna Taylor gazes at us calmly, radiating a warm, vital presence. Sherald took extraordinary care in planning every detail of this painting, studying Taylor’s style in social media posts and learning about her from her family. Sherald used an Instagram photo as the source for Taylor’s face, and she asked the woman who modeled for “She Always Believed the Good about Those She Loved,” on view nearby, to pose for Taylor’s figure. The celestial teal tones echo Taylor’s birthstone, alexandrite. With permission from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, Sherald painted the engagement ring he had purchased, but was never able to give to Taylor, on her left hand. Like others whose likenesses hang in this exhibition, Taylor was a vibrant young woman. Sherald chose to picture her as a sister, a daughter, a coworker—someone we all might know.