Jonathan Buttall

Jonathan Buttall around 1770 as a boy in blue

Jonathan Buttall (* 1752 ; † 1805 ) was the son of a wealthy iron merchant in Soho , London . He was a music enthusiast; Johann Christian Bach , the eleventh son of Johann Sebastian Bach and court musician in London, the Italian virtuoso Felice Giardini and the composer Karl Friedrich Abel lived in his direct neighborhood on Greek Street in Soho .

Buttall's friends also included the painter Thomas Gainsborough , who had met the London family in Bath in the 1760s . Gainsborough supported young Jonathan's fondness for music and books, especially after his father's death in 1768. After Gainsborough went to London in 1774, the friendship intensified. While still in Bath, Gainsborough had completed a portrait of the 18-year-old Buttall in 1770, which later became world-famous under the title The Blue Boy (Eng .: Boy in Blue ); it showed the young man in a 17th century blue costume. When the painter died in 1788, Buttall hosted his funeral.

Jonathan Buttall initially successfully took over his father's business; in 1796 he went bankrupt and had to sell the painting that had previously been in his possession.

literature

• Meryle Secrest : Duveen. A Life in Art . University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill. 2006, ISBN 0-226-74415-9 .
• David Tyler: Buttall, Jonathan (1752-1805) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . OUP, Oxford 2005, ISBN 0-19-861411-X .

Web links

• Werner Busch: Gainsborough's Blue Boy - creating meaning through color . In: Städel-Jahrbuch , NF 17 (1999), pp. 331–348 ( online, PDF )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Meryle Secrest: Duveen. A Life in Art ; P. 193
2. ^ Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, [1793-1821]: July 13, 1793, to August 24, 1802 , Volume 1, p.177