I’ve been making my way through books of photographs on the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. In one of them, there’s a photograph of King on a protest march, and he’s wearing a denim shirt and dungarees. In two others, he’s in a hospital bed in pajamas and a robe, recovering from illness and exhaustion, smiling among friends and family members.

Photographs of King looking like this are rare. That’s because nearly always, he’s dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie, often with a thin tie-clip and white handkerchief set in the suit’s breast-pocket. In a church, in the street of a busy city or dusty Southern town, at a rally, in a courthouse: King is immaculately dressed, professional, respectable and self-respecting, a minister of God and leader of his people on important moral business.

In these photographs, King appears in multiple moods and many facial expressions, and in a range of private and public contexts and situations. King is composed amid tension or chaos, or is standing or walking with patient defiance, or is at a podium or lectern with his arms raised in eloquent address to the faithful. On almost all occasions, he’s in a fine suit.

It’s the consistency of this visual record that by contrast makes John Wilson’s portrait of King (1985) so mesmerizing. Wilson (1922–2015) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and muralist known for powerful paintings, illustrations, and other works of art that honor Black dignity, racial justice, and equality. Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, he taught at Boston University and created major public monuments, including sculptures of King. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presented an exhibition titled “Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson,” February-June 2025, and it was there that I saw this drawing of King for the first time.

Wilson’s dark rendering of the face, the wounded tilt of the head, pulled me toward it even before I knew it was a portrait of King. Not until I came close, took in the image, and found confirmation in the wall label, did I know for certain who this figure was, in its sharp lines and poignant shades, white and black hues and shadows. Relatively small, 22 x 21 inches, black and white pastel on cream Japanese paper, it’s deeply expressive, King as a man of sorrow, Black man and Everyman.

This is King in isolation, no adoring crowds or followers, no enraged foes, no indications of a place or setting. There are signs of a suit, maybe the lines of lapels. But that’s the merest sketch. Only half-arms, no hands. The focus is on the black area from the eyes to the prominent nose and mouth, and the very dark neck and chin declining to the chest.

Wilson frames King with vertical and horizontal lines, and there’s also a horizontal line across the center that unifies the composition even as it slashes across King’s body. The large head is positioned above two triangles, with strong ridges of black that are located against surrounding layers and areas of white, gray, and black, scratched by lines and squiggles.

Many of Wilson’s markings are deliberate and forceful. Others are fast and dashed off, yet these too are done with purpose, and are revelatory. I feel the intensity of Wilson’s application of pastel on the sheet, the imaginative and intellectual labor he’s performing, evoking King’s penumbra of hurt.

King’s head is strong, solid, and secure, but then again, it’s at an angle, frail, weighed down by heavy blackening, and pierced by the downward thrusting and cross-cutting lines. No one knows the trouble King has seen, the burden of the identity that was thrust upon him and that he embraced. His face recedes into the paper, into a separateness that the public King may have experienced even as he fought for integration and union. But that’s not all, because there’s also an appeal from this face to the viewer, a movement outward, a need for person-to-person intimacy, a sharing of the sense of sacrifice and service.

I’m reminded of Alberto Giacometti’s ambition in portraiture to capture “presence,” to engage and confront “the unsolvable mystery of the head.” King’s shoulders are not broad, but the fact-ness of his face, the angles of the shoulders that fasten the head, the simultaneously delicate and rough essentializing of the figure, bear witness that this man of gentle strength has not been brought low.

I love the narrow black band of King’s hairline from ear to ear, the lightening of much of the forehead, and the rectitude and grief in the eyes, at once penetrating and withdrawn. Wilson portrays King’s exposed bareness of black and dark skin, and curves (both soft and hard) of cheeks and chin from ear to ear, echoing the tight crown of the black hairline, above it a halo of mottled white. This face is full of history—King’s own and that of the people he embodies.

The mood that Wilson conveys through his blend of broad strokes and fine points, his handling of the white and light tones of the paper, is somber and introspective. But I also sense a plea or entreaty in King’s countenance. There’s a faint glow on his forehead, and a descent into ever-darker facial features, chin, and neck, the lineaments of a tragic consciousness.

We are free to project into this drawing our knowledge of King as a mighty campaigner for civil rights, African American visionary, fervent dreamer, martyr gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968. We could import these associations, from photographs and film clips and written testimonies and biographies, into Wilson’s stark image.

But this would run counter to Wilson’s intention, to his strategy and achievement of exclusion. The countless images of King in a suit, active in the world: that’s what this King is not. What Wilson is aiming for is the feeling in a face, a representation of King that connects him to the viewer and to a question all of us ask: where I am in relation to others?

In Wilson’s portrait, made seventeen years after King’s death, we encounter a beautiful image positioned against an atmospheric background of shading and shadow. There are smoky puffs and patches of black and white pastel, dashes and marks, and areas of smooth surface. Through this intimately created work of art, Wilson has enabled us to come close to a vulnerable human being who says, “Come closer, stay with me.”

William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, where he enjoys teaching courses on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other American writers. His recent publications include essays on Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway.

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