The Blue Boy face swap

Where this one comes from

Gainsborough painted this around 1770 and dressed the sitter — probably Jonathan Buttall, the son of a London ironmonger — in slashed blue silk a hundred years out of fashion, the costume of a Van Dyck. It was an argument in paint with Joshua Reynolds, who had lectured that blue belonged in the cool background of a picture and never in its warm centre.

What is in the picture

The blue is the argument. Reynolds had lectured that cool colours belonged in the background of a picture and warm ones at its heart, and Gainsborough answered by putting a boy in slashed blue silk dead centre in a warm brown landscape and letting him win. The costume is a hundred years out of date on purpose: it is Van Dyck's, borrowed. One hand rests on the hip; the hat he holds in the full painting falls below this crop.

When people use it

It is the face of being dressed far better than the occasion asked for and feeling no need to explain. It fits the wedding guest who outdressed the wedding, the person who arrived at a casual dinner in a suit, and anyone whose profile picture was clearly taken by a professional.

How your face lands in it

A younger face than anything else in the catalogue, and the swap will not change that — it keeps your own features and the age that comes with them, so this one lands as a contrast rather than a disguise. The hair is a loose shoulder-length crop that frames the face closely and covers the hairline, and the light is soft and frontal, which makes an ordinary indoor photo a reasonable match.

The Blue Boy — Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1770. The artist died in 1788, so the painting is in the public domain worldwide, and a faithful photograph of a flat public-domain painting carries no new copyright of its own. Source

Also in: Paintings