Barkley Hendricks’ Stanley Whitney Portrait Could Break Auction Record
Barkley L. Hendricks, Stanley , 1971 oil on canvas
Courtesy of CHRISTIE'S
Barkley Hendricks’ Stanley Whitney Portrait Could Break Auction Record
Barkley L. Hendricks’s 1971 portrait of artist Stanley Whitney is poised to break a record when it comes up for auction in May.
The life-size Stanley pictures its titular subject standing in street clothes against a gold background, smoking a cigarette. It will be offered during a single-owner sale at Christie’s, where it has a low estimate of $5 million. If it reaches that figure, the sale will be a record price for a work by Hendricks, who died in 2017 at the age of 72.
The two Philadelphia-born artists met while studying at Yale University in the 1970s. Hendricks eventually became known for his paintings of fashion-forward subjects—predominantly depicting people of color in his inner circle. He’s credited with influencing the current generation of Black figurative painters.