Curator’s Introduction: Gainsborough’s Blue Boy

Excellent online lecture from National Gallery introducing their current exhibition showing Gainsborough’s Blue Boy on his return on loan to England from the Huntingdon Museum in America.

Christine Riding, Head of Curatorial at the gallery, took us through the history of the picture and how it went to the US in 1922. She talked about whether the sitter was the artist’s nephew, Dupont, and whether is should be considered as a portrait or a genre work.

She then outlined why is being shown with two Van Dyck’s and two other works by Gainsborough leading us though why artists from the 18th century chose to show people in the earlier fashion of the Stuart era. She also talked about how Van Dyck not only represented a great painter, but also the idea of connoisseurship as he himself was a collector.

I hadn’t realise that Gainsborough had been part of the circle of artists around the Foundling Museum along with Hogarth and how this influenced his painting of children as well as how he say theatrical style paintings by Watteau owned by another of the circle.

Finally we looked at how the picture has influenced later artists from Millais through to Peter Blake’s Self-Portrait with Badges.

This was a great introduction to the exhibition, which I have been to since, so watch this space for a review of that, and it was helpful to know more about the thinking behind the display and the layers of idea which they are trying to show.