The painting was in Buttall's possession until he filed for bankruptcy in 1796. It was first bought by the politician John Nesbitt and then, in 1802, by the portrait painter John Hoppner. In about 1809, The Blue Boy entered the collection of the Earl Grosvenor and remained with his descendants until its sale by the second Duke of Westminster to the California railroad magnate Henry Edward Huntington in 1921. Before its departure to California in 1922, The Blue Boy was briefly put on display at the National Gallery, where it was seen by 90,000 people. The British recognized the loss of Gainsborough's painting in several notable ways including its appearance on stage towards the end of the Mayfair and Montmartre variety show at the New Oxford Theatre in spring 1922. Framed on stage, dressed as the boy in the painting, and flanked by cowboys and Indians, the celebrity Nellie Taylor sang Cole Porter's "The Blue Boy Blues." The Grosvenor family played a significant role in the increasing fame of The Blue Boy during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They not only allowed visitors into their London residence to see the painting, they also frequently lent the painting to important exhibitions, including the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester in 1857 when The Blue Boy captured the attention of viewers who had likely never previously given much thought to fine art. Gallery guides and exhibition publications passed on the story of the disputed origins of the painting and claimed that "there is nothing which has attracted more universal admiration than this 'far-famed' painting." The painting was subsequently exhibited to much public acclaim at the Great London Exposition in 1862, the Royal Academy and the South Kensington Museum in 1870, the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885, and the Royal Academy in 1896, when it was identified as "the most famous of all of his pictures" by a review in the London Times. In addition to viewing Gainsborough's Blue Boy in public venues, the painting also appeared in publications and as individual black and white and color prints. It became a popular ceramic figure and showed up in advertisements. The boy in blue also came alive as men, women, boys, and girls dressed up in similar costumes and pretended to be Gainsborough's youth at fancy-dress balls and marriage ceremonies, in pantomimes and plays, and eventually in movies and television programs. When girls and women