Who was the young man who sat for
Thomas Gainsborough's
The Blue
Boy! His identity was unknown for nearly two centuries. Recent
research suggests that he was Jonathan Buttall, the teenage son of a rich
London ironmonger.
Gainsborough is thought to have made the family's
acquaintance in Bath. The city in south-west England was renowned throughout the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries as a fashionable spa where affluent English families went to drink the healing waters of its springs.
The ultimate in elegant watering-places, Bath was even frequented by
members of the royal family when they felt jaded. Visitors to the baths
were subjected to a severe regimen. Forced to get up at six in the
morning, women spent an hour in the warm water of the baths dressed in
long garments made of heavy material that could not cling to their bodies
and reveal their contours. Men, too, bathed fully dressed. Outside the
baths, the city was the place for flirtations, balls and evening card
parties. There were many official functions like the Assembly-Rooms Balls
and places both indoors and out where people promenaded for the purpose of
meeting and keeping up with the latest goings-on. Gambling was rife and
the city boasted the dubious attractions of a bevy of demimondaines
to charm away the boredom of gentlemen who were not in Bath with their
families. Women had to content themselves with gossip over the tea table.
The city seethed with intrigue, which is why Horace Walpole remarked it
was ten times better to leave the city than to enter it. The rich visitors
tended to be vain and ostentatious. This was probably the reason why the
young
Thomas Gainsborough
left Ipswich in the east of England to settle in Bath in 1759. The move
paid off. Showered with portrait commissions from wealthy patrons, the
painter was soon able to afford luxurious apartments in the beautiful and
elegant Royal Circus.
However, the resort was not merely the haunt of the aristocracy. It was
just as popular with rich tradesmen's and manufacturers' families. From
1750 English iron foundries and cotton mills had been flourishing and
their owners could well afford to take the waters at Bath. One can imagine
Gainsborough meeting Mr Buttall, the ironmonger, and his family at the
Pump Room. Gains-borough had begun his career by copying and restoring
Flemish paintings. It is therefore not surprising that he borrowed
stylistic elements from the works of
Anthony van Dyck to paint Jonathan
Buttall, who is dressed in the fashion of the seventeenth century.
