The Sky is Blue the Sea is Blue and the Boy is Blue, 2017, is one of four works by Paula Rego inspired by Bastardia, a 2005 story by the celebrated Portuguese novelist, playwright and poet Hélia Correia. It was created for Rego’s 2017–2018 Jerwood Gallery Hastings exhibition The Boy Who Loved the Sea and Other Stories, the first major exhibition of new work by the artist in a UK public art gallery for ten years. In Correia’s fateful tale, a boy who believes his father is the sea makes a journey to the ocean, which he has never seen before, experiencing a number of encounters and hardships along the way. This work depicts the story’s denouement, in which on reaching his destination the boy immediately dies: sky, sea and the boy’s lifeless body assume shades of blue. Writing about this work in a review of the Hastings show published in Studio International, Emily Spicer, commented ‘Rego’s illustrations for this tragic tale are vibrant and busy, packed with animals and characters, but the last image, that of the boy, lying naked and blue on the sand like a broken doll, the sea licking his feet, is comparatively sparse. Our attention is completely focused on this strange figure, who, in death, has become frozen like a wooden saint. Tilt your head to the side and he becomes Jesus on the cross, a martyr to neglect.’

Born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal, Dame Paula Rego RA studied at The Slade School of Fine Art from 1952 to 1956. She lives and works in London. Later this year, the largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Rego’s work to date will take place at Tate Britain (7 July–24 October 2021). Current major solo exhibitions include Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance, curated by Catherine Lampert, which travelled from MK Gallery, Milton Keynes to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 2019–2020 and opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in September 2020 (18 September 2020–3 May 2021). Her work is in the collections of major museums including the British Museum, London, UK; National Gallery, London, UK; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; Tate Gallery, London, UK and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK. Paula Rego will have her first solo exhibition at Victoria Miro during the latter part of 2021.