Seeing Blue Boy again

July 17th, 2010

I first saw this painting in the summer of 1983 on my first trip to LA with my grandparents who were visiting from India.  I was totally taken – I remembering walking left and right and being puzzled by the eyes following me.  I’d forgotten it’s name but remembered the blue. I remember being happy to be with my grandparents.  The grandchild of Indian Anglophiles, symptoms I fell for the English grandeur of the Huntington Library in general.  And then weirdly last week, I named a short film of mine Blue Boy, completely unaware that it was the name of this painting that had branded itself into my memory. I visited today, 27 years later, on my fifth wedding anniversary and it was just as pretty.  And I checked, the eyes still follow you.  Blue Boy, Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1770 at the Huntington Library.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at 2:40 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.