The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of July 8, 2026

A vertically oriented watercolor portrait depicts a woman with light skin tone from the shoulders up against a light background. Her gray and black shoulder-length hair is accented with thin blue and red lines. Pink washes tint her cheeks and chin. Her eyes look toward us, and her red lips are set in a horizontal line. Below her neck, a pale yellow garment is visible. Handwritten text is inscribed along the bottom edge.

Shirley King

1990–94

Emma Amos

(American, 1937–2020)
America
watercolor
Sheet: 67 x 50.1 cm (26 3/8 x 19 3/4 in.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2023.126.16
© Emma Amos; Courtesy of RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Emma Amos includes a self-portrait and a portrait of her daughter India in this work.

Description

The Gift comprises forty-eight individual watercolor portraits of women artists, writers, and curators in Emma Amos’s community in New York in the early 1990s. The women pictured belong to different generations and are from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Amos created the work as a gift for her daughter India, on the occasion of India’s twentieth birthday.
  • Collection of the artist
    after 1990
    Emma Amos [1937–2020], New York, NY, given to daughter, India Amos
    2023
    (Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    2023–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Amos, Emma, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, and Kathleen McManus Zurko. Emma Amos: Paintings and Prints 1982-92: an Exhibition. Wooster, Ohio: College of Wooster Art Museum, 1993.
  • Emma Amos: Memory. Flomenhaft Gallery, New York, NY (January 31–March 9, 2013).
    Real: Figurative Narratives in Contemporary African-American Art. The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL (1997).
    Emma Amos: Changing the Subject. Paintings and Prints 1992-1994. Art in General, New York, NY (March 12–April 30, 1994); The Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ (December 18, 1994–March 5, 1995).
    Emma Amos: Paintings and Prints: 1982–1992. The College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, Ohio (August 25–October 24, 1993); Wayne Center for the Arts, Wooster, Ohio (September 1–September 30, 1993); Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, Portsmouth, Ohio (October 1–November 16, 1994); the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York (January 15–March 12, 1995)
  • {{cite web|title=Shirley King|url=false|author=Emma Amos|year=1990–94|access-date=08 July 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2023.126.16