Pinkie (painting)

'' by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1770. Oil on canvas Sarah Moulton Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton was born on 22 March 1783, in Little River, St. James, Jamaica. She was the only daughter and eldest of the four children of Charles Moulton, a merchant from Madeira, and his wife Elizabeth. Sarah was baptised on 29 May 1783, bearing the names Sarah Goodin Barrett in honour of her aunt, also named Sarah Goodin Barrett, who had died as an infant in 1781. Sarah probably began sitting for Lawrence, painter-in-ordinary to George III, at his studio in Old Bond Street soon after the receipt of this letter on 11 February 1794. According to an official Huntington Library publication: The painting was later in the collection of Herbert Stern, 1st Baron Michelham and after his death passed to his widow. She sold the painting at a Hampton & Sons auction in 1926, from where it was acquired by Sir Joseph Duveen for 74,000 guineas. The painting was one of the last acquisitions of the California land developer Henry E. Huntington in 1927. In 1934 the Huntington foundation constructed a new main gallery as an addition to the former residence for the collection's major portraits. Except for brief intervals during travelling exhibitions, Pinkie has hung there since that time. ==Relationship to The Blue Boy==

Pinkie owes part of its notability to its association with the Gainsborough portrait The Blue Boy. According to Patricia Failing, author of Best-Loved Art from American Museums, "no other work by a British artist enjoys the fame of The Blue Boy." Pinkie and The Blue Boy are often paired in popular esteem; some gallery visitors mistake them for contemporaneous works by the same artist. The two were created by different painters a quarter century apart, however, and the dress styles of the subjects are separated by more than one-hundred fifty years. The model who posed for Gainsborough's portrait wears a period costume of the early seventeenth century as an homage to Flemish Baroque painter Anthony van Dyck, whom Gainsborough held in particular esteem. Sarah Moulton wears the contemporary fashion of 1794. The faces and gaze of the boy and girl are perhaps similar enough for them to be thought brother and sister, but the two works had no association until Henry Huntington purchased them in the 1920s. Nonetheless, the two are so well matched that William Wilson, author of The Los Angeles Times Book of California Museums, calls them "the Romeo and Juliet of Rococo portraiture" and notes that their association borders on cliché: ==In popular culture==

Pinkie is also used as a set decoration in the 1946 American film Margie, and can be seen in the residence of Margie and her grandmother, located on the wall in the sitting room. Pinkie and The Blue Boy can be seen in the pilot episode of Eerie, Indiana. Pinkie can be seen hanging on a wall of Gus Fring's apartment, opposite the bathroom entrance, in the Better Call Saul episode "Black and Blue." The paintings are used as set decorations for many episodes of the American television show Leave It to Beaver. The two paintings are located on the wall immediately to the left and right side of the front door of the family home. In the film Joker, Pinkie and The Blue Boy are both seen hanging on the wall of Arthur and Penny Fleck's apartment near the television set. ==References==