The painting was a cheap print of a popular painting and hung on the living room wall of her small terraced house. The influence of Van Dyck is most clearly seen in the more official… “That’s why it was noticed by professional artists when it was sold.”. His work has been featured on KPCC, KQED, the Daily Beast and others. The museum is in a … He graduated with a Master's of Science in Journalism from the University of Southern California. “Up to the end of the 20th Century, it was this pop culture image you would see everywhere.”, Even filmmaker Quentin Tarantino appeared to reference the painting in his movie “Django Unchained.”. It is a historical costume study as well as a portrait: the youth in his seventeenth-century apparel is regarded as Gainsborough's homage to Anthony van Dyck, and in particular is very close to Van Dyck's portraits of Charles II as a boy. There’s been versions of the painting in the satirical Mad Magazine and there’s a portrait of Disney’s Mr. Toad as the Blue Boy, too. Huntington bought the painting from the Duke of Westminster in England. This week: Thomas Gainsborough, “The Blue Boy.” Considered by many to be Thomas Gainsborough’s (1727-1788) most famous painting, “The Blue Boy” is a masterful full-length portrait that has captivated connoisseurs and scholars for centuries. CLICK HERE TO TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS. As it traveled the world, the dealer fed media outlets regular updates: The Blue Boy is on a train, the Blue Boy is crossing the ocean, the Blue Boy is traversing across America, the Blue Boy has arrived in California. The boy in the painting was not a royal, as some guess, but actually a boy named Jonathan Buttall. He covers city hall and school board meetings for Pasadena, Pico Rivera and El Monte. Now that the restoration is complete, McCurdy hopes people will see the painting for its technical prowess, just as artists in the 1770s viewed it. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions. Harvest Christian Pastor Greg Laurie, recovering from COVID-19, will resume duties Oct. 18, How do I vote in Pasadena? But curator Melinda McCurdy said the museum has a plan for social distanced visits, just as soon as the county allows them to reopen. Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) purchased The Blue Boy in 1921 for $728,000, the highest price ever paid for a painting at the time. The subject, Sarah Barrett Moulton, died a few months after the painting was finished. “It carried this personal idea of British identity when it was sold to Henry Huntington.”. When the museum started to restore the painting a few years ago — in full view of the public, removing layers of varnish and dirt, restoring the colors to their former glory — McCurdy said the museum had more day-to-day visitors coming to see the Blue Boy than before the process began. “Fingers crossed it’s sometime soon,” McCurdy said in an interview. At first, artist Thomas Gainsborough’s masterwork didn’t garner the attention it later received, at least not among the public. It was a whopping success among his fellow artists, who appreciated his dynamic and nuanced brushwork, and his “virtuosic use of paint,” McCurdy said, particularly how he used multiple pigments of blue to make the satin fabric really pop. When I was a young child in the seventies, I became fascinated by a painting in my grandmothers house. The Blue Boy. Although the painting was created in the 18th century, the clothing worn by Buttall for the painting is from the 16th century. According to the National Portrait Gallery, the subject is Jonathan Buttall, an ironmonger who was friendly with Gainsborough.). When it was sold in 1921, she continued, the art dealer and Huntington himself organized a going away party of sorts for the painting, where tens of thousands came out to say goodbye to a quintessential piece of British history before it was sent to California. There were plays written about it, she said, and famed songwriter Cole Porter even penned a little tune about him, “The Blue Boy Blues,” later covered by B.B. 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The boy was a similar age to me and for some reason looked sad and downcast, tears brimming from troubled eyes. "Pinkie" was completed by Thomas Lawrence in 1794, and the portrait features an 11-year-old girl in a pink dress. King and others. More Thomas Gainsborough's (1727–1788) iconic painting first appeared in public in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1770 as A Portrait of a Young Gentleman, where it received high acclaim, and by 1798 it was being called "The Blue Boy"—a nickname that stuck. Why has the Blue Boy painting endured as a…, Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window). The Blue Boy is all dressed up with no place to go and no visitors to impress. For a long time, the Blue Boy has been more famous for its reproductions than the painting itself, McCurdy said. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. For the first 4–5 months during the year-long exhibition, The Blue Boy was in the gallery as Christina O'Connell, The Huntington's senior paintings conservator, worked on the painting performing examination and analysis, and then paint stabilization, surface cleaning, and removal of non-original varnish and overpaint. As of 2014, "The Blue Boy" is displayed at the Huntington Art Gallery in San Marino, Calif. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. He was the son of a hardware merchant who was friends with Gainsborough. At heart, Gainsborough was far more inclined to paint landscapes and once famously admitted that he only painted portraits for the inc… “There’s thousands of uses,” McCurdy said. Or, contact our editors by emailing [email protected]. FULLY INSURED (WCB + Liability) # Painting #Interior # Exterior # Commercial # Residential#Painting New Construction Condo Painter in Chilliwack Interior & Exterior painter Interior & Exterior painter Interior & Exterior painter New construction painter New construction painter Spray Time Painter in Chilliwack Painter in Chilliwack … “It draws your eye and it creates this ethos of courtliness that Gainsborough really wanted to sell, as a portraitist.”, (Curiously, she notes, the subject of the painting wasn’t royalty at all. And although conservators have finally finished restoring the 1770 Blue Boy painting just weeks ago, no one’s around to see his revitalized colors pop. Fifty years later, it started to take on a different meaning when it began to be reproduced, she said. Gainsborough painted The Blue Boy, an oil on canvas, around 1770 and drew inspiration from the 17th century Flemish painter Van Dyck and his Portrait of Charles, Lord Strange. "The Blue Boy" was painted by Thomas Gainsborough in 1770. GET BREAKING NEWS IN YOUR BROWSER. What does the mayor do? And then it took on another meaning, “as an image of youth and British boyhood in a way,” McCurdy continued. You can still buy the Blue Boy’s likeness on socks in the Huntington Library’s gallery shops — which is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to unexpected or fantastical reproductions of what was once the most expensive painting in the world. "The Blue Boy" was painted by Thomas Gainsborough in 1770. Bradley Bermont is a reporter in Los Angeles. The painting is suggested to be mainly a costume study, as it includes a very detailed depiction of boy’s clothing. One of the most iconic artworks in British and American history, The Blue Boy, made around 1770 by English painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), underwent its first major technical examination and conservation treatment in public view, in a special satellite conservation studio set up in the west end of the Thornton Portrait Gallery in the Huntington Art Gallery. I was so attached to the paintin… In Thomas Gainsborough: Bath period …of Gainsborough’s most famous pictures, The Blue Boy, was probably painted in 1770. We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Paying careful attention to his subjects and the fine details of their features and expressions, Gainsborough also believed in using the surrounding backdrop to set the scene for their mood and character. Perhaps Gainsborough's most famous work, it is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttle (1752–1805), the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, although this has never been proven. After major conservation project, The Blue Boy is back on the wall, awaiting visitors when the gallery reopens. The Blue Boy is brilliantly blue once again, popping with color and no longer trapped behind a malaise of green hues, after conservators at The Huntington Library, … See more ideas about Pinkie, Blue, Thomas gainsborough. If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. X-rays of this painting show that the canvas had other work behind the current painting we know today. Should Pasadena’s mayor get paid like it’s a full-time job? The subject of the painting is believed to be Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy merchant. Gainsborough's command … “My hope is that the restoration and conservation work … will actually diminish some of the hype around the painting and let people see that it’s a masterful piece of work,” she said. The Blue Boy is a painting by the English painter Thomas Gainsborough who was an expert in portraits and landscapes.

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