The Blue Boy (c. 1770) is a full-length portrait in oil by Thomas Gainsborough, owned by The Huntington in San Marino, California. History One of Gainsborough's best known works, The Blue Boy was long thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall (1752–1805), the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, because of his early ownership of the painting. This identification has never been proven and as Susan Sloman argued in 2013, the likely sitter is Gainsborough's nephew, Gainsborough Dupont (17541797). It is a historical costume study as well as a portrait; the youth appears in clothing from the 17th century as the artist's homage to Anthony van Dyck and is very similar to Van Dyck's portraits of young boys, especially his double portrait of brothers George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Lord Francis Villiers. Gainsborough had already drawn something on the canvas before beginning The Blue Boy, which he painted over. The painting is about life-size, measuring wide by tall. In 1821, John Young (17551825), a printmaker and keeper of the British Institution, published a reproduction of the painting for the first time and told the story of how the artist painted The Blue Boy to contradict the advice of Sir Joshua Reynolds. As President of the Royal Academy, Reynolds had lectured publicly on the use of warm and cool colors in his Eighth Discourse presented in 1778. This origination story appealed to the public's perception of the distinctly different personalities of Reynolds and Gainsborough since it set the two artists in opposition. As president of the Royal Academy, Reynolds was a disciplined advocated of history painting who played an active role in curriculum development and delivery, and the presentation of the annual exhibitions. Gainsborough, on the other hand, was a portrait painter and landscapist and remained aloof from any academic functions. Reynolds was knighted in 1769 and wrote art criticism and delivered lectures while Gainsborough never received sovereign recognition and wrote lively correspondence as his written legacy. These and other real and imagined differences between the two artists were exaggerated in subsequent reports about the creation of The Blue Boy. Although it eventually became clear that the painting was completed by Gainsborough eight years before Reynolds' Eighth Discourse, the story about how it resulted from a challenge over warm and cool colors was too good to give up. The repeated erroneous account propelled the painting to international fame.