“I cried the first time I saw my picture – like a big baby,” said Ashley Cooper, who was depicted in “Charles I,” during a closing celebration panel discussion entitled “The Making of Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis.”
In the painting, Cooper recreates the dignified posture of Charles I in the original Dutch painting. “ I couldn’t remember what I had on. I hoped I did the pose right and I hoped it was the best picture that I ever took in my life. And it is. I love it.”
The Saint Louis Art Museum announced this week that the institution recently purchased “Charles I.” The large-scale painting by Kehinde Wiley was one of the works from the “Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis” exhibition that closed February 10 after an immensely popular four-month run.
“‘Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis’ was tied closely to our collection and to our city, and it encouraged each of us to examine artistic traditions, current events, and the power of art to unite our community,” said Brent R. Benjamin, the Barbara B. Taylor Director of the Saint Louis Art Museum. “I’m pleased that generations of St. Louisans will be able to enjoy this vibrant painting.”
“Charles I” is one of two works in the exhibition that Wiley based on a 1633 portrait of the English king by Daniel Martensz Mytens the Elder.
Wiley studied the museum’s collection to identify works he would reference in “Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis.” He visited St. Louis in 2017 and scouted models from areas in North City and North County – including Ferguson. The style, scale and grandeur that have become a trademark of Wiley’s paintings is epitomized by “Charles I” and the entire exhibition.
“Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis” featured 11 paintings that were based on eight works from the Museum’s collection and one print from a local collection.
“A lot of his work is about power,” said Simon Kelly, Saint Louis Art Museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art. “And a lot of his work is political – a critique of the absence of African-American portraits in the history of Western portraiture, and he’s trying to address that in his work.”
Kelly curated “Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis” along with Hannah Klemm, the museum’s assistant curator for modern and contemporary art. Research assistance was provided by Molly Moog.
“Kehinde Wiley plays a critical role in the contemporary renaissance of portrait painting as a genre,” Kelly said. “By referencing historical depictions of the powerful and giving his modern sitters the same authority, Wiley creates portraits that are richly complex and visually stunning.”
The free exhibition ended just under two weeks ago and included several sold-out programs, including a lecture by Wiley and “The Making of ‘Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis,” a panel discussion with museum curators and sitters from the portraits.
More than 100 free guided tours of the exhibition to school, youth and community groups were offered by the museum. The impact of the “Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis” was explicitly clear during the exhibition’s closing panel discussion.
The Q&A portion of the talk included a touching exchange between Cooper and her family when her brother William Hanks stepped to the microphone to offer commentary and pose a powerful question to those who were “immortalized” as part of “Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis.”
“With my sister Shontay, she’s not the type to step out of her comfort zone and do something like this. So, it really makes me proud,” Hanks said as he fought back emotion.
Their sister Shontay Haynes, is depicted in Wiley’s “Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman” from the same exhibition.
“Through history we look at paintings and they tell stories of the people we don’t know,” Hanks continued. “And it fills my heart to know that somebody will see a picture of my sisters years from now and they will ask a simple question: ‘Who are they?’”
He asked all of the subjects how they felt knowing that they were “a part of history now.”
“Overwhelmed, bruh,” Cooper said.
Quiet and reserved, she was a woman of few words during the discussion – but was eager to respond to the impact the experience had on her brother.
“I love you – and I’m glad you feel that way about me,” She continued.
“I love you too, and I’m so proud,” Hanks responded.
The tender moment spoke to the intention of the exhibition – and the painting that Saint Louis Art Museum acquired from it.
“Wiley’s paintings welcome African Americans, Africans and people of the African diaspora into the space of the canvas and assert their right to occupy that space,” Klemm said. “For the Saint Louis Art Museum, ‘Charles I’ goes further – the painting not only expands who is represented in portraiture, it literally brings the local community into the collection.”
“Charles I” will be installed in the contemporary galleries this summer.
