Konichiwa! This time I'm talking about two of the most famous portrait paintings in the Huntington gallery: Pinkie and Blue Boy. These two paintings are often paired together in popular esteem, and some visitors often mistake them for contemporary works by the same artist. William Wilson, author of the book of California Museums, calls the pair "the Romeo and Juliet of Rococo portraitures". Pinkie is a portrait of Sarah Barrelt Moulton by Thomas Lawrene, 1794. She was one of the last acquisitions of Henry E. Huntington in 1927.
The Blue Boy is the most famous work by Thomas Gainsborough, 1770. He's thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, but that was never proved. Gainsborough already had something painted on Blue Boy's canvas, which is a fairly large canvas for a portrait being 48 inches wide by 70 inches long. Originally, Blue Boy had a dog beside him in the lower right corner, which was found when the painting was x-rayed. Huntington brought Blue Boy in a public outcry in Britain for $724,800 (182,200 pounds).
These two portraits hang across from each other in the Huntington gallery in the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.
Till next time, FoxCat ya later (^_^)
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