Thomas Gainsborough’s most famous painting, “The Blue Boy,” is a historical costume study, as well as an insightful portrayal of an adolescent on the brink of manhood. Instantly declared a masterpiece when it was exhibited at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 1770, the work portrays Jonathan Butall, the son of a hardware merchant who was Gainsborough’s close friend. Painted over another work Gainsborough (1727 – 1788) had already started, the depiction of Butall in 17th-century apparel is Gainsborough’s homage to artist Anthony Van Dyck. This piece was sold to American railway pioneer Henry Edwards Huntington for $182,200, a record sum in that era, and is now displayed in the Huntington Art Gallery in California.

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