Gainsborough's 'The Blue Boy' returns to London

The Blue Boy’ is back in London after 100 years

Location: London, England

It was painted by British artist Thomas Gainsborough in 1770

The portrait will go on display at the National Gallery

exactly a century after it was last shown publicly in London

(SOUNDBITE)(English) DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, GABRIELE FINALDI, SAYING:

"…..Blue Boy is not only one of the most famous pictures by Gainsborough, I think it's one of the most famous pictures in British art altogether.'’

(SOUNDBITE)(English) DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, GABRIELE FINALDI, SAYING:

"It is a remarkably beautiful picture, it's striking, it's moving, it's beautifully painted, it's enormously sort of romantic. Even when Gainsborough painted it, it was romantic because he was harking back to the sort of glorious painting of Van Dyck over a century before. So there's a huge amount sort of invested in this picture, and it's great to be able to show it here 100 years on."

The painting had hung at the gallery for three weeks in 1922

before it was bought by U.S. railroad magnate and art collector Henry E. Huntington

and shipped across the Atlantic

The exhibition marks the first time it has been loaned out

by the California-based Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens