[2] One of Gainsborough's best known works, The Blue Boy was long thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall (1752–1805), the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, because of his early ownership of the painting.

Let this conduct be reversed; let the light be cold, and the surrounding colour warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens and Titian, to make a picture splendid and harmonious.

As president of the Royal Academy, Reynolds was a disciplined advocate of history painting who played an active role in curriculum development and delivery, and the presentation of the annual exhibitions.

Although it eventually became clear that the painting was completed by Gainsborough eight years before Reynolds' Eighth Discourse, the story about how it resulted from a challenge over warm and cool colours was too good to give up.

In about 1809, The Blue Boy entered the collection of the Earl Grosvenor and remained with his descendants until its sale by the second Duke of Westminster to the California railroad magnate Henry Edward Huntington in 1921.

The British recognized the loss of Gainsborough's painting in several notable ways including its appearance on stage towards the end of the Mayfair and Montmartre variety show at the New Oxford Theatre in spring 1922.

By the early 20th century, Marlene Dietrich was photographed in a Blue Boy costume and Shirley Temple appeared as Gainsborough's youth in the movie Curly Top in 1935.

In the four-panel strip, artist Jack Rickard and writer Frank Jacobs used contemporary stereotypes of homosexuality to contrast Gainsborough's boy in blue with a group of football players.

[13] The Blue Boy was temporarily loaned to the National Gallery, London, and placed on view on 25 January 2022, a century to the day since it left the UK in 1922.

[14][15] In October 2021, Kehinde Wiley's Portrait of a Young Gentleman was installed opposite to Gainsborough's Blue Boy in the Huntington Museum of Art.

The third season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation "Hollow Pursuits" features Reginald Barclay's holodeck replica of Wesley Crusher dressed in an outfit similar to The Blue Boy.

In the movie Ghostbusters 2 (1989), the character Janosz Poha contrasts a large portrait of the fictional 16th-century sorcerer Vigo the Carpathian with Gainsborough's Blue Boy.

In the 12/14/1970 daily Peanuts strip drawn by Charles M. Schulz, the character Schroeder comments that Gainsborough painted “The Blue Boy” the year his favorite composer, Beethoven, was born.

In the Phineas and Ferb episode “Operation Crumb Cake”, Baljeet recreates “The Blue Boy” out of red pepper flakes.