Amy Sherald: American Sublime | Art & Artists

The flash of red provided by this young girl’s hat draws attention to her inquiring gaze. She holds a playfully oversized cup—a nod to Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)—that gives the painting a slightly surreal feeling. With this work, after more than a decade of dedicating herself to painting, Sherald first gained national attention when she won the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. She was the first woman and the first African American to win the competition.

National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of the artist and the 25th anniversary of National Museum of Women in the Arts

With freckles and glossy pink lips, the young girl depicted here tilts her head with an air of questioning or curiosity. The term "redbone" in the title refers to lighter-skinned Black people, and the label can be used as an endearment or a pejorative, depending on context. Often called redbone in her youth, Sherald’s use of the term here calls attention to how such language can impose distance between a person and their own self-image. By contrasting Redbone with the popular children’s character Strawberry Shortcake, Sherald disputes the societal significance placed on skin color.

These two young women hold hands as they confidently eye the viewer. Their relationship to one another is ambiguous; they could be sisters, lovers, or friends. Bathers have served as popular subjects in Western art for hundreds of years, particularly in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European painting. Artists such as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir often depicted white subjects relaxing near rivers and pools. Sherald’s vision instead situates Black women as autonomous actors in their own narrative of leisure, joy, and ease.