Amy Sherald
1973–
Introduction
Amy Sherald (born August 30, 1973) is an American painter. She works mostly as a portraitist depicting African Americans in everyday settings. Her style is simplified realism, involving staged photographs of her subjects. Since 2012, her work has used grisaille to portray skin tones, a choice she describes as intended to challenge conventions about skin color and race.
In 2016, Sherald became the first woman as well as the first African American ever to win the National Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition with her painting, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance). The next year, she and Kehinde Wiley were selected by former President Barack Obama (Wiley) and former First Lady Michelle Obama (Sherald) to paint their official portraits, becoming the first African Americans ever to receive presidential portrait commissions from the National Portrait Gallery. The portraits were unveiled together in 2018 and have significantly increased attendance at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In December 2020, her piece The Bathers (2015) was sold at auction for $4,265,000, nearly 30 times the presale estimate. On November 17, 2021, Welfare Queen (2012), sold for $3.9M in a Phillips New York auction and brought to light the need for more governance around resale royalties for artists.
Wikidata identifier
Q29834919
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed July 15, 2025.
Introduction
Portrait painter focuses on African-American cultural history and the representation of the African-American body. She painted the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama for the National Portrait Gallery, 2018.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, painter
ULAN identifier
500450273
Names
Amy Sherald
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed July 15, 2025.
