With highest honor

Painting by Mario Moore

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Artist Mario Moore ’13MFA wanted to capture a “full picture” of Edward Bouchet,
Class of 1874, ’76PhD—the first Black person to earn a PhD from a US university, the sixth person to earn a PhD in physics from a US university, and now one of the few Black graduates to join the many white faces on the walls of Yale. The President’s Committee on Art in Public Spaces commissioned the work after a group from Saybrook College proposed it, and it will hang in Saybrook’s dining hall.
      Moore chose to focus on the middle-aged Bouchet, but he included two
pictures-within-the-picture that show Bouchet at different ages. “I wanted this
portrait to talk about his life,” he says.