At-A-Glance: Kehinde Wiley’s Equestrian Portrait of Philip V

Suggested Language for Student Discussion

Give your students 30 to 60 seconds to look at this work and take in all the details.

• What comes to mind when looking at this portrait?
  • What is one word you would use to describe the sitter?
  • What might he be thinking or feeling?

Make sure to give your students ample time to look and discuss before sharing the information below.

Artist Kehinde Wiley asks: “What is portraiture? It’s choice. It’s the ability to position your body in the world to celebrate you on your own terms.”

• Have you ever had your portrait taken, maybe for a family photo or school pictures?
  • Did you get to choose what you wore, your hairstyle, or the background?
  • How did that make you feel?

• Think about how you would want to be represented in your own portrait.
  • What clothes would you wear?
  • What would the setting be?
  • How would you be posed?
  • What message would you want to send?

• Who or what comes to mind when you think of a powerful person? What are some similarities or differences between these examples?

About Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV

This artwork features a contemporary portrait of an African American man and explores the themes of race, representation, and agency.

Traditionally, large-scale portraits—paintings that represent specific human subjects—would have depicted wealthy, powerful, and often white patrons like Philip IV, King of Spain and Portugal. This painting reimagines Diego Velázquez’s 1635 portrait of Philip IV, which you can view here. In this rendition, an unidentified Black man replaces King Philip, an inversion of long-standing power structures regarding race and class, yet artist Kehinde Wiley retains the original painting’s title and leaves his model unnamed. By intentionally placing Black subjects in positions of power, Wiley prompts viewers to consider the lack of such images on many museum walls.

In addition to Wiley’s recasting of King Philip, other distinctions are worthy of note. The tension between the rearing horse and static rider appears in both Velázquez’s and Wiley’s paintings. However, while Philip IV has a thousand-yard stare, Wiley’s unnamed sitter meets the viewer’s gaze. This noticeable shift in the subject’s gaze encourages viewers to consider the sitter’s active participation in the creative process and demands recognition of his dignity and individuality. Indeed, the model here has chosen to present himself in a dynamic hip hop ensemble, wearing a brightly colored, camouflaged suit set paired with a matching cap and designer high top sneakers.

Twisting vines of kudzu, an invasive weed endemic to the southern United States, splash across the bottom of Wiley’s canvas. As dust storms plagued the country in the early twentieth century, the government promoted kudzu as a way to combat widespread soil erosion. This decline in soil quality resulted from the exhaustive cotton production characteristic of the south’s plantation slavery system. Here, the vines may serve as a metaphor for the pervasive and persistent qualities of racism and the rippling effects of American slavery.

About the Artist

Kehinde Wiley, 2018. Courtesy Templon, Paris & Brussels.

Kehinde Wiley is a contemporary African American artist best known for his large portraits reframing Black subjects in positions of power. Born in 1977 in Los Angeles, California, Wiley began taking art classes as a child and, at age twelve, spent a summer studying art in Russia. Wiley went on to earn a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University.

Wiley’s work aims to correct centuries of race-based exclusion by portraying contemporary people of color using the conventions of historic European portraiture. Wiley transforms these historical portraits, intended to convey the status and power of the sitter, into monumental paintings that center Black subjects. Through these paintings, the artist confronts the exclusion of African Americans from art history and their stereotypical portrayal in media. To create his portraits, Wiley asks everyday people to model for him and invites them to choose their own clothing, accessories, pose, and even the historic portrait in which they will appear. The final paintings are a collaboration between the artist and the sitters, one in which the models maintain a degree of ownership over how they present themselves.

In 2018, Wiley unveiled his portrait of former President Barack Obama (view here) for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, becoming the first African American selected to paint a presidential portrait. Wiley describes his work as “a type of self-portraiture. It’s about looking at people who look like me.”