has been using his defiant stare and unique fashion sense to transfix viewers for centuries. But even art fans may not know that the story of Thomas Gainsboroughâs most iconic work is nearly as rich as the fabric of his subjectâs blue britches.
In painting The Blue Boy at some point around 1770, Gainsborough borrowed more than the regal-yet-relaxed look that the 17th century Flemish painter achieved in his portraits. He also pulled his costume inspiration from Van Dyck's Portrait of Charles, Lord Strange .Â
Art historians debated the identity of this posh-looking lad for centuries. Todayâs scholars believe him to be Jonathan Buttall , the young son of an affluent hardware merchant who had befriended Gainsborough.Â
Gainsborough had a heated rivalry with his portrait-painting peer Sir Joshua Reynolds. Some art historians have suggested that The Blue Boy was conceived as a glorious means of refuting Reynold's declarations on color. Specifically, Reynolds believed:Â
In 1939, an X-ray was taken of the painting that revealed the canvas had once been an incomplete painting of an older man, before it was cut down and repainted with the boy. But thatâs not the only X-ray surpriseâin 1995, it was discovered that Gainsborough had originally painted a dog to go alongside the boy. But it got covered up by a pile of rocks, possibly because, in the words of curator Shelley Bennett , âmaybe Gainsborough thought all that fluff fought with the boy's hat."Â
Gainsborough had high hopes for the piece's reception when it debuted in 1770 at the Royal Academy, a prestigious venue that had only opened a year before. He was not disappointed. The incredible play of color and thoughtful brush strokes of The Blue Boy made it an instantly adored hit.Â
Though he is remembered for portraits like The Blue Boy , Gainsborough famously declared (in the third person ), "He painted portraits for money, and landscapes because he loved them.âÂ
The German director is best known for his 1922 silent horror film Nosferatu , but in 1919, Murnau made his directorial debut with Der Knabe in Blau , or The Boy in Blue . Only a few frames of the film remain today, but among them is a shot of a boy who seems to have stepped straight out of Gainsborough's masterpiece.
In the 2012 Quentin Tarantino western, the titular anti-hero doles out bloody vengeance draped in a bright blue suit that looks eerily similar to the one in Gainsborough's famous work. Costume designer Sharen Davis confirmed this inspiration, telling Vanity Fair , "Quentin had it in the script as powder blue. And I said, 'I just canât do that. It is very '70s, but thatâs going to look like polyester no matter what I make it out of.' I slipped a copy of Thomas Gainsboroughâs The Blue Boy in the back of the research book. He didnât say anything, but he saw it. He sort of said later, 'Oh! Make him look like Blue Boy.'"
is essentially life-sized, measuring in 70.0 by 44.1Â inches.
Although the Blue Boy himself owned the painting at one point, in 1796 a desperate Buttall declared bankruptcy and sold the unique portrait to politician John Nesbitt. By 1802, the work had been passed on to acclaimed portrait artist John Hoppner before being sold to the Earl Grosvenor in 1809. It remained with the Earl's family for more than a century. Â
Exhibitions at the British Institution and the Royal Academy won the painting further critical acclaim, while prints of the piece made it popular with the masses. By the early 1920s, The Blue Boy was a gem in England's artistic crown.Â
Thanks to this growing esteem, The Blue Boy âs 1921 sale to American railroad tycoon Henry Edwards Huntington caused a massive outcry among the English, who were horrified that The Blue Boy should leave his homeland. Though the exact sales figure is a matter of debate, Encyclopaedia Britannica pegs it at roughly $700,000 (or about $9.3 million today), which made it the second most expensive painting in the world, behind Leonardo da Vinciâs Madonna and Child .
Before The Blue Boy departed for the U.S., the National Gallery displayed it one last time, drawing an astounding 90,000 people. The Gallery's director, Charles Holmes, was so overcome by the loss that he wrote his own farewell to the piece on its back, which read, " Au Revoir, C.H. "Â
Today The Blue Boy is the pride and joy of the art collection at the Huntington Library in California.Â
Sharing the spotlight at the center of the Huntington Library's collection is Pinkie , a portrait of a sweet young girl in a pink dress and bonnet painted by English portraitist Thomas Lawrence. Twenty-four years the junior of Gainsborough's painting, the piece hangs across from The Blue Boy , giving the effect that the two young subjects stareâperhaps longinglyâat each other.
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