What the purple dress in Oprah’s portrait means
A new portrait of Oprah Winfrey has just been unveiled in Washington DC. It draws on symbols used by the Old Masters, and hints at the unexpected origins of the colour purple.
(BBC) Official portraits have a way of stifling the spirit of their subjects under a heavy varnish of stiff formality. They smother them with selfimportance. Only a rare few painted portraits manage to coax to the surface of the canvas some semblance of the sitter’s inner life – the dynamism, dignity, and drive that put the individuals before the easel in the first place. And then there’s Oprah’s.
Unveiled this week at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, this merrily luminous full-length oil-on-linen likeness of the acclaimed US talk show host, author, producer, and philanthropist, created by the Chicago-born realist Shawn Michael Warren (whom Winfrey tapped to take on the commission in spring 2021), vibrates with unbounded ebullience. This is Oprah. And then some.
It feels fitting that a figure who is revered for her ability to communicate with honest ease and ardent sympathy with audiences across an increasingly divided United States should inspire a portrait that similarly possesses the power to communicate, not just with those who will encounter the work in the coming months and years, but with the whole history of portraiture before it. The arresting painting, which seems to capture Winfrey in a fleeting unguarded moment as she traipses across an evergreen garden in a tornado of purple taffeta, is more than a static snapshot of spontaneous joy.
Warren’s carefully constructed work offers a welcome occasion to remind ourselves how to read a painting, old-school-style – a skill that has slowly slipped amid the endless onslaught of pouty selfies that clogs our screens. Take that dress, for instance. It had to be purple. Winfrey, who rose to prominence in 1985 as a co-star in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Colour Purple (a powerful role of resilience that earned her both Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations), reflected on her choice of dress during a speech at the unveiling ceremony this week. “The colour purple,” Winfrey said, “to me, is the essence of what God represents: the complications of making the