7/24/2023 0 Comments Lady in blue hat paintingBefore its departure to California in 1922, The Blue Boy was briefly put on display at the National Gallery, where it was seen by 90,000 people. In about 1809, The Blue Boy entered the collection of the Earl Grosvenor and remained with his descendants until its sale by the second Duke of Westminster to the California railroad magnate Henry Edward Huntington in 1921. It was first bought by the politician John Nesbitt and then, in 1802, by the portrait painter John Hoppner. The painting was in Buttall's possession until he filed for bankruptcy in 1796. Van Dyck's portrait of George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Lord Francis Villiers The repeated erroneous account propelled the painting to international fame. These and other real and imagined differences between the two artists were exaggerated in subsequent reports about the creation of The Blue Boy.Īlthough it eventually became clear that the painting was completed by Gainsborough eight years before Reynolds' Eighth Discourse, the story about how it resulted from a challenge over warm and cool colors was too good to give up. Reynolds was knighted in 1769 and wrote art criticism and delivered lectures while Gainsborough never received sovereign recognition and wrote lively correspondence as his written legacy. Gainsborough, on the other hand, was a portrait painter and landscapist and remained aloof from any academic functions. As president of the Royal Academy, Reynolds was a disciplined advocated of history painting who played an active role in curriculum development and delivery, and the presentation of the annual exhibitions. This origination story appealed to the public's perception of the distinctly different personalities of Reynolds and Gainsborough since it set the two artists in opposition. Let this conduct be reversed let the light be cold, and the surrounding colour warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens and Titian, to make a picture splendid and harmonious. It ought, in my opinion, to be indispensably observed, that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm, mellow colour, yellow, red, or a yellowish white, and that the blue, the grey, or the green colours be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support or set off these warm colours and for this purpose, a small proportion of cold colour will be sufficient. As President of the Royal Academy, Reynolds had lectured publicly on the use of warm and cool colors in his Eighth Discourse presented in 1778. In 1821, John Young (1755–1825), a printmaker and keeper of the British Institution, published a reproduction of the painting for the first time and told the story of how the artist painted The Blue Boy to contradict the advice of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The painting is about life-size, measuring 48 inches (1,200 mm) wide by 70 inches (1,800 mm) tall. Gainsborough had already drawn something on the canvas before beginning The Blue Boy, which he painted over. It is a historical costume study as well as a portrait the youth appears in clothing from the 17th century as the artist's homage to Anthony van Dyck and is very similar to Van Dyck's portraits of young boys, especially his double portrait of brothers George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Lord Francis Villiers. This identification has never been proven and as Susan Sloman argued in 2013, the likely sitter is Gainsborough's nephew, Gainsborough Dupont (1754–1797). ![]() ![]() One of Gainsborough's best known works, The Blue Boy was long thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall (1752–1805), the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, because of his early ownership of the painting. 1770) is a full-length portrait in oil by Thomas Gainsborough, owned by The Huntington in San Marino, California. Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, California For other uses, see The Blue Boy (disambiguation). This article is about the Gainsborough painting.
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