Portrait of a Young Boy

The English painter George Henry Harlow was a highly acclaimed society portraitist, and he was trained in the studio of Thomas Lawrence for a year and a half from 1803 to 1804. He died rather young at the age of thirty-one, shortly after his return home from Italy, where he had garnered admirable accolades, including the exceptional honor of being admitted to the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, in 1818.

This small portrait of a young boy—yes, a young boy — wearing a pink silk dress, typifies Harlow’s loose style. The question of color defining gender appears in the late eighteenth century, but with pink preferred for boys as a stronger, more masculine color, and blue — a color long associated with innocence and virginity — as the primary choice for girls.