Seeing Blue Boy again
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.