The Blue Boy

Thomas Gainsborough

Painted

c. 1770

Collection

The Huntington, San Marino

A boy in seventeenth-century blue satin stands proudly holding his hat. Gainsborough deliberately broke the rule of the day that cold blue should never dominate a picture, and paid homage to Van Dyck at the same time. When it was sold to America in 1921, ninety thousand people queued in London to say goodbye.

Object record (Wikimedia Commons) · Public domain

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