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You don’t often get to sing ‘Three Lions’ in reference to a painting, but here’s your chance, because Thomas Gainsborough’s famous ‘The Blue Boy’ is coming home. The work – one of Britain’s great masterpieces according to many, though not to me, because I genuinely dislike it – has been in America for 100 years, ever since it was sold by the Duke of Westminster to an American railway magnate called Henry E Huntington.
It was so popular at the time that before being shipped off across the Atlantic, it was given a farewell tour where it was seen by 90,000 people, and the director of the National Gallery wrote ‘au revoir’ on the reverse. Touching sentimentality, or wanton vandalism? Let history be the judge.
‘The Blue Boy’ will be coming to the National Gallery in 2022 on loan from the Huntington Art Gallery in California, 100 years to the day after it first left, and will be on show for free. Football might not be coming home, but this painting is. It’s not as good, but it’s better than nothing.
Thomas Gainsborough's ‘The Blue Boy’ will be at the National Gallery, Jan 25 2022-May 15 2022.
Can't wait? Here are the top ten exhibitions you can see right now.
And while you're at it, here are the best free shows in London right now.