What Are the Values of the “Pinkie” and “The Blue Boy” Paintings?
The painting “The Blue Boy” was purchased by Henry Huntington in 1921 for a then-record price of $725,000, which translates to more than $9.6 million in 2014. “Pinkie” was the last painting purchased by Huntington in the late 1920s for an undisclosed price.
Both portraits hang close to each other in The Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif. “The Blue Boy” was painted by Thomas Gainsborough in 1770. Huntington bought the painting from the Duke of Westminster in England.
“Pinkie” was completed by Thomas Lawrence in 1794, and the portrait features an 11-year-old girl in a pink dress. The subject, Sarah Barrett Moulton, died a few months after the painting was finished. Sarah’s younger brother, Edward, was the father of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
