The boy doesn’t look 250. But he will turn that ripe old age very soon, in 2020. To celebrate his birthday, he’s getting a major makeover!

English artist Thomas Gainsborough painted this work in 1770. The artist titled the work, A Portrait of a Young Gentleman. The painting shows a boy dressed all in bright blue silk. When viewers saw the full-length portrait for the first time, they gave it a nickname: “Blue Boy.”

But famous “Blue Boy” is looking a little scruffy right now. Over time, the painting has become tattered. Some of its have colors have faded. The paint is even flaking off! The painting has been at Southern California's Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, since 1921. Christina O’Connell works there as a painting conservator. She uses modern tools to fix the 18th century masterpiece.

A six-foot microscope zooms in on the painting. It magnifies tiny details 25 times. To repair wear, Ms. O’Connell will use paint that matches what Mr. Gainsborough used in 1770.

There was once a dog in “Blue Boy.” Would you have guessed? Mr. Gainsborough painted over it! You can still see the dog’s front paws. Mr. Gainsborough turned them into rocks when he blended the rest of the dog into the background. Ms. O’Connell has some guesses about why Mr. Gainsborough got rid of the dog. “If the white fluffy dog was there in the painting you'd spend a lot of attention on it rather than looking at the figure of the boy,” she says.

The kid’s furry friend was discovered in 1994 using an X-ray. Ms. O’Connell keeps that X-ray at her work station. She also keeps X-rays that show a nearly foot-long tear in the canvas. The canvas was repaired so well that you can’t see it without a microscope. But you can see something else: People painted over the tear with the wrong color! Ms. O’Connell will fix that too.