Pinkie & The Blue Boy: The Two That Never Was — A Personal CC Share

I wanted to share something personal to me. My grandmother had prints of these two paintings in her house my entire life — almost worthless as reprints, but she loved them. Of course, I Googled them because I wanted to know more about them and why Pinkie and The Blue Boy are always displayed together. I fell down a rabbit hole and knew they had to end up in my Sims game. I think I made them after she passed away. I believe my sister still has the prints, but I’m not sure.

Here’s the short version of the rabbit hole:

Pinkie was painted by Thomas Lawrence in 1794. Her grandmother commissioned it because Sarah was away at school across the ocean from her family. Sarah was eleven when she sat for it, and she died the following year. Her portrait debuted at the Royal Academy the day after her burial.

The Blue Boy was painted by Thomas Gainsborough around 1770 and is believed to portray Jonathan, the son of a hardware merchant. He’s dressed in clothing already a century out of fashion as a tribute to a master painter Gainsborough deeply admired.

The paintings had nothing to do with each other until the 1920s, when American railroad tycoon Henry Huntington paid a record-breaking fortune for The Blue Boy and later acquired Pinkie, placing them together on the wall of his California estate. They became permanently linked in popular culture after that. “The Two That Never Was” is what I’m calling them in the game.

I would love to have these officially in the game someday. I’m not really a fan of the Marketplace model, and even if I were, the rules don’t allow cloned meshes for submission, so it just isn’t possible as things stand. I’m not an expert creator either — I made them from one item with two swatches and only used gold frames because that’s how these paintings are usually displayed, and it’s how my grandmother’s prints looked too.

Two portraits. Two different artists. Two decades apart. And yes, I priced them at §4,500 because in my Sims world these aren’t reprints — they’re the originals. Also, the lore behind these paintings is just really cool to me, and since the original artworks are old enough to be in the public domain, I think I’m safe there too. 😄

I noticed in the close-ups that I still need to fix some things — the border is slightly off on both paintings in places, but honestly the original item I cloned has the same issue. I might go back and work on it later, but for now I’m happy with how they turned out, and it’s just really cool having them in my game.

The item I cloned was Jazz Cats, a base game painting.

Honestly, this could make a really cool kit idea someday — especially with clothing inspired by both portraits. 💡

That said, if it’s locked behind the Marketplace, I personally wouldn’t buy it. I draw the line at buying currency just to purchase additional in-game items. I do think the Marketplace is a cool concept for bringing creator CC into the game officially without it showing as mods, but I think the rollout and monetization approach missed the mark. 🪙🪙