The Eight-Year-Old redraws famous works of art with tigers: Blue Tigery

By Shala Howell, July 20, 2015

Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, painted in 1770.

Earlier this summer, The Eight-Year-Old stumbled onto the concept of derivative art. She looks up various works of art on her Daddyo’s iPad, then redraws them as portraits of Tigery. Earlier this summer, she integrated Tigery into da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Munch’s The Scream, and Manet’s Self-Portrait with Palette. This week, The Eight-Year-Old and her buddy Tigery are reworking Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy.

Like any serious artist, The Eight-Year-Old first draws a study for her work, before attempting the final version. After some discussion, she agreed to let me use her works for a summer series on Caterpickles, on the condition that I tell you a little bit about the original work in the post.

Last time, we talked about the slap dash nature of Impressionist art, and the critic’s sour view of it as being produced by artists who lacked the self-discipline (or perhaps the common sense) to finish their art properly before they displayed or sold it. This week’s work is a wonderful example of the type of art that the critics of Manet’s time would have preferred.

Painted in 1770, Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy rocked the art world at the time with its shimmering spectrum of blues and creams and the intricate brushwork of the boy’s satin clothing. The boy himself apparently wasn’t a celebrity, but this painting of him quickly became one. Even today, Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy remains the best-known of all the works in the Huntington Collection.

Sadly, The Eight-Year-Old did not have access to the same range of indigo, lapis, cobalt, and cream tints that Gainsborough did. But as you’ll see, she did her best with the comparatively paltry selection of blues and creams in her crayon collection.