Gainsborough’s Blue Boy to return to UK after 100 years

Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, a popular painting that left Britain a century ago to a public outpouring of anger and sadness, is to return temporarily to the National Gallery in London, Report informs, citing The Guardian.

It was announced on Wednesday that the artwork would come home 100 years to the day since it was last seen in the UK. It is a crowd pleaser, described by newspapers at the time as “the world’s most beautiful picture”.

Once owned by the Duke of Westminster, it was purchased by the American railway magnate Henry E Huntington a century ago for a then world record price of $728,000.

Since then, it has been a star exhibit at the Huntington Art Gallery in San Marino, California, never loaned and never likely to be loaned again.

The painting first appeared in public at the Royal Academy in 1770, the year it was painted, when it was titled A Portrait of a Young Gentleman. By 1798 it was being called The Blue Boy, a nickname that stuck.

The Blue Boy will hang in room 46 from 25 January until 15 May 2022.