Edward Richard Gardiner

The boy is Gainsborough's nephew, Edward Richard Gardiner, the son of the painter's sister Susanna, and he is about eight or nine here. He is recorded as spending time in his uncle's studio, and the portrait is thought to have had a companion, a picture of his sister Susan painted at the same age. Look at what he is wearing. The pale blue suit is the same costume that appears in Gainsborough's most famous full-length, The Blue Boy, now in California, which suggests the outfit simply hung in the studio as a prop and went on whichever young sitter needed it. The picture stayed with the family for about two centuries. In 1965 a descendant, Miss Marjorie Gainsborough Gardiner, gave it to the Tate, which has lent it to the National Gallery.