The Huntington Library April 2009 (Page Five)

Did You Know? - Pinkie is the traditional title for a portrait of 1794 by Thomas Lawrence in the permanent collection of The Huntington at San Marino, California where it hangs opposite The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough. These two works are the centerpieces of the institute's art collection, which specializes in 18th-century English portraiture. The painting is an elegant depiction of Sarah Barrett Moulton, who was about eleven years old when painted. Her direct gaze and the loose, highly-movemented brushwork give the portrait a lively immediacy

Did you know? - Pinkie owes part of its notability to its association with the Gainsborough portrait The Blue Boy. According to Patricia Failing, author of Best-Loved Art from American Museums, ?no other work by a British artist enjoys the fame of The Blue Boy.?  Pinkie and The Blue Boy are often paired in popular esteem; some gallery visitors mistake them for contemporary works by the same artist.

Actually the two were created by different painters a quarter century apart, and the subjects' dress styles are separated by over one hundred fifty years. Jonathan Buttall, who posed for Gainsborough's portrait, wears a period costume of the early 17th century as an homage to Flemish Baroque painter Anthony Van Dyck, whom Gainsborough held in particular esteem. Sarah Moulton wears the contemporary fashion of 1794