News Release - Huntington to Lend Its Iconic "Blue Boy" to the National Gallery, London

Exhibition opens Jan. 25, 2022, exactly 100 years after Gainsborough’s masterpiece left London for California

SAN MARINO, Calif. —One hundred years after Henry E. Huntington purchased Thomas Gainsborough’s masterpiece, The Blue Boy (ca. 1770) from the Duke of Westminster, and it set sail from England for its new home in the United States, the iconic portrait will go back on view at the National Gallery in London. The free exhibition will run from Jan. 25 through May 3, 2022, its opening date marking to the day 100 years since it last hung on the walls there. This will be the first time that The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens has loaned the painting.

At the National Gallery, The Blue Boy will be displayed among a small selection of related masterworks that connect to Gainsborough’s oeuvre and influences. A robust slate of public programs and a catalog will complement the exhibition. In exchange for the loan, a work from the National Gallery’s collection will come to The Huntington for display.

“This masterpiece has made an indelible mark on both art history and popular culture, capturing the imaginations of a wide range of audiences,” said Karen R. Lawrence, Huntington President. “Given The Blue Boy’s iconic status at The Huntington, this is an unprecedented loan, one which we considered very carefully. We hope that this partnership with the National Gallery will spark new conversations, appreciation, and research on both sides of the Atlantic.”

A part of the core art collection built by Huntington and his wife Arabella, The Blue Boy has been a visitor favorite since it went on view when The Huntington opened to the public in 1928. “We imagine this to be the one and only time the painting will travel, given its iconic status at The Huntington,” Lawrence said.

The loan follows The Huntington’s “Project Blue Boy,” an extensive, nearly three-year conservation project to analyze, stabilize, clean, and restore the dramatic large-scale painting. Much of the conservation work was performed in public to provide visitors with a real-time window into the art and science of the conservation practice.

During the conservation process, curators were able to see for themselves a legendary note on the back of the painting. Before leaving England in 1922, The Blue Boy went on display for three weeks at the National Gallery, attracting some 90,000 visitors. A 1922 New York Times story about the painting’s departure reported, “The Blue Boy is leaving England forever and 90,000 persons seized a last opportunity to see it... On one of the stretchers at the back (of the painting) is scribbled in pencil, ‘Au revoir. CH.’ It is the wish of Sir Charles Holmes, director of the National Gallery, which neither he nor any other Englishman expects to see fulfilled.”