“The Blue Boy”
It’s always interesting to me how certain pieces become iconic representations of an entire artist’s career. This painting is one such piece.
This rather large oil on canvas portrait (it is over 70 inches, almost 6 feet tall!) is by the English portrait artist, Thomas Gainsborough, from circa 1770, and is titled “The Blue Boy”. Though the exact identity of the young man is not definitively known, it is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy merchant and a teenager at the time it was painted. Gainsborough’s masterpiece was in Buttall’s possession until 1796 when he filed for bankruptcy.
Though it is not readily evident to modern day viewers, the boy in the painting is actually wearing a costume piece, dated to perhaps a century earlier then when it was painted. Known as “Van Dyke dress”, the style is an homage to the seventeenth century Flemish Baroque artist, Anthony van Dyck, whose court paintings were influential to the British artists of the eighteenth century.
“The Blue Boy” became relatively popular in the early twentieth century and copies for the general public sold well. The painting has undergone extensive restorations and research, with new images clearly depicting a dog in the lower right part of the canvas, by the boy’s feet. For some reason, Gainsborough had painted over the dog.
An interesting facet about the history of this piece is that Gainsborough painted it in a specific color palette as a direct response to his art rival, Joshua Reynolds. In a letter that Reynolds had written to Gainsborough, he said that the majority of colors in a painting should be warm colors, such as red and yellow. He continued, cool colors such as blue, green, and gray, should only be used to support the warmer colors. Reynolds thought that was the key to making a well-balanced and harmonious piece. In response, Gainsborough painted this mostly cool colors, and was still able to achieve the harmonious composition that Reynolds had thought could not be done. It is by far Gainsborough’s most iconic painting.
“The Blue Boy” is currently on display at the Huntington Art Museum in San Marino, California in the United States.
For more on Thomas Gainsborough, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
