For more than 20 years, Amy Sherald has been putting the narratives of Black families and Black people to canvas. In 2016, she became the first woman and first African American to win the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, which led to her painting Michelle Obama for the National Portrait Gallery in 2018. That oil-on-linen portrait was her first commissioned work—until Breonna Taylor.
Taylor is an “American girl, she is a sister, a daughter, and a hard worker. Those are the kinds of people that I am drawn towards,” says Sherald, who is immunosuppressed and has been unable to participate in protests. She calls this portrait a contribution to the “moment and to activism—producing this image keeps Breonna alive forever.”
Sherald’s process typically begins with taking a picture of her subject. Painting Taylor, a person she had never met, who would never be able to sit for her, presented a unique challenge. Sherald took extraordinary care in reimagining Taylor, inflecting her portrait with symbols of the 26-year-old’s life. Sherald found a young woman with similar physical attributes, studied Taylor’s hairstyles and fashion choices, and drew inspiration from things she learned about the young woman—that she had been a frontline worker in the battle against COVID-19; that her boyfriend had been about to propose marriage; that she was self-possessed, brave, loving, loved.
“She sees you seeing her. The hand on the hip is not passive, her gaze is not passive. She looks strong!” says Sherald. “I wanted this image to stand as a piece of inspiration to keep fighting for justice for her. When I look at the dress, it kind of reminds me of Lady Justice.”
Jasmine Elder of JIBRI, an Atlanta-based fashion designer, created a crepe dress specifically for the cover. “When thinking about what she was going to wear, I wanted Breonna to like it,” says Sherald. “I wanted her family to look and say, I can see my daughter and sister in this.” A friend sent Sherald an image of actress Danielle Brooks wearing an Elder piece, and Sherald found Elder on Shoppe Black, a digital platform curated by husband and wife Tony O. Lawson and Shantrelle P. Lewis that showcases Black businesses. During the painting process, Sherald added movement to the dress, and a slit—“I thought, What would I want if I were 26.”
As for the hues, “painting someone posthumously, I wanted it to feel ethereal but grounded at the same time,” Sherald says. She tried a rainbow of options, yellows and reds and pinks, but none felt quite right, until she invoked the portrait itself. “ ‘Breonna, what color do you want this dress to be? Please, tell me what color you want this dress to be,’ ” Sherald says she mused. Then she hit on blue, a shade that echoes Taylor’s March birthstone, the aquamarine. “The color that I chose almost had a resplendence to it. The monochromatic color allows you to really focus on her face. The whole painting really becomes about her.”
There are other painstaking, heartbreaking details: the gold cross on a chain necklace; the engagement ring Taylor would never get to wear, on her left hand (photographed by LaToya Ruby Frazier). This is Sherald’s nod to Taylor’s future and how her life was taken from her. “I made this portrait for her family,” says Sherald. “I mean, of course I made it for Vanity Fair, but the whole time I was thinking about her family.”
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