2014 • 46.75″ x 17.5″
acrylic, spray paint on used fence pickets
(After the portrait of Jonathan Buttall by Thomas Gainsborough)
I loved the way the paintings and sculptures of the boy in the blue suit and the girl in the pink dress had a pop culture name of “Blue Boy” and “Pinkie.” We all remember seeing them in the beds and baths of our friends’ mothers, but none of us remember them having any impression other than an un-articulated feeling about their mothers’ bad taste. Later, when I found out everyone had similar experiences, it was great fun. I always wonder though…who among the people I meet today are the children of such women, or do they themselves have representations of these long dead children in their master bedrooms?
Wikipedia says:
The Blue Boy (c. 1770) is a full-length portrait in oil by Thomas Gainsborough, now in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.[1] Perhaps Gainsborough’s most famous work, it is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall (1752–1805), the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, although this has never been proven. It is a historical costume study as well as a portrait: the youth in his 17th-century apparel is regarded as Gainsborough’s homage to Anthony van Dyck, and in particular is very close to Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles II as a boy.
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