Juliet Carey is Senior Curator, Waddesdon Manor (The Rothschild Collection)

The Blue Boy (1770; detail), Thomas Gainsborough. Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino.

Dress code – decrypting Gainsborough’s dazzling boy portraits

‘The Blue Boy’ is heavily influenced by Van Dyck’s grand manner. But what did the artist mean by dressing up his young subject in this way?

22 Jan 2022
Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (1573–1624) (detail; c. 1593–97), unknown artist.

Reign makers – Roy Strong’s guide to Elizabethan portraits, reviewed

This authoritative survey gives some of the most familiar works of English art a new lease of life

16 Dec 2019
Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) (1576–78), attributed to Nicholas Hilliard.

A radical new look at the greatest of Elizabethan artists

Two portraits newly attributed to Nicholas Hilliard will transform our understanding of the artist

29 May 2017