The acclaimed African American artist Kerry James Marshall has donated his first formal portrait of a living person to the University of Cambridge.
The painting is of Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr, an alumni of Clare College, Cambridge, to mark the award of an honorary degree in recognition of his outstanding achievements as an author, scholar, historian and film-maker.
Marshall’s portrait of Gates was unveiled on Monday and is now on public display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It is only the second work by the world-renowned artist in a public institution in the UK.
Both the artist and the author were present at the portrait’s unveiling. It was the first time Gates had seen the finished work.
The portrait was originally intended to hang in Clare College, said Gates. “Once they realised it was by Kerry James Marshall, it couldn’t be hung in some common room with students spilling beer everywhere.”
Five years ago, Marshall’s 1997 painting Past Times sold for $21.1m (£17.4m), making him reportedly the highest-paid African American artist. The buyer was the rapper Sean Combs, known as P Diddy.
Gates, 73, was one of only three black male students when he arrived at Clare College 50 years ago this month. He was “raised to be a doctor” but switched to studying English literature.
He became an expert in African American literature and is now director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
Gates is engaged in two battles with public bodies. One is over “pernicious censorship” after the state of Florida blocked a new course on African American history for high school students.
The other concerns a recent ruling by the supreme court against affirmative action at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. “The right is trying to end [affirmative action]. They said there was too much power too quickly for black people, and they’re trying to roll back the clock.”
Barack Obama’s election as the first African American president in 2008 had “kicked awake the slumbering beast of white supremacy”, he said.
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Marshall, 67, said it was a “no-brainer” when he was asked to paint Gates’s portrait. The work, Henry Louis Gates Jr. 2020, depicts Gates seated in front of a window at a table on which sits an Emmy award and a small stack of his books, including The Signifying Monkey and Wonders of the African World.
Asked why he chose the books to be in the portrait, Marshall said: “I happened to have them at home in my library.”
Last month, Washington National Cathedral unveiled two stained glass windows by Marshall to replace images of two Confederate generals.
The new windows reflected “the values of justice and fairness and the ongoing struggle for equality among all God’s children”, said the cathedral’s dean, Randolph Hollerith.
Marshall charged $18.65 for the commission to symbolise 1865, the year the last enslaved African Americans were liberated at the end of the Civil War.