12 min 02 :
The most famous Gainsborough above all is associated with the artist great rival Reynolds. For two centuries it has been widely believed that Reynolds argued against the youth of blue as the main color in a painting and Gainsborough decided to defy him by painting this time a converse : The Blue Boy. It is a well told tale but the known fact failed to confirm it :
That idea that colors recede and become more bluish as one goes further into the distance aerial perspective, started to become a rule in painting. So the ideas were that warmer colors, browns and golds and things, should become positive foreground colors ; and the cooler colors, blues and greens, should become used and reserved for the background.
And Reynolds rather began to teach this as almost the fixed rule.
This was a challenge to Gainsborough and he painted this boy completely in blue and in a Van Dyck costume. He was actually the son of, I think, a farrier. So he wasn't very well elevated this boy at all, but nevertheless, this picture disproved Reynolds at sad and has become quite famous has a sense.
As far as we know Gainsborough's Blue Boy as it is now called (Gainsborough himself did not call it The Blue Boy), it was just the portrait of a gentleman. He exhibited this in 1770. Now the remarque in the Reynolds discord was not before 1778. So there is no way he could have been painted that picture to respond that theorie. The story that he painted it to respond the theorie isn't found to late 1820, about 30 years after the Gainsborough's death. So it does seem that this is an invented story that was really embroidered after the knowledge of the rivalry.
The Blue Boy is a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, a young man who certainly had connections in ipwitch. Jonathan became a good friend of Gainsborough, and it appears that the artist painted this famous image for his own purposes, not as a commission.
Gainsborough made a perfect contemporary dress for his portrait subjects, but here, he decided to experimente with a kind of clothing seeing in great works of Van Dyck. This dramatic clothing is the most memorable fixture for cambers. The strength of the young man posture and the way he seems to be in charge of the breeding get harmonious landscape. He is impressive. It remains a giant image of English art.
