Artware Fineart has dated this Samuel Johnson Oil Painting to the 18th Century.
Portrait of Dr Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
oil on panel
21 x 16.6 cm (8.1/4 x 6.1/2in.)
after the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the Tate N00887
Literature
Engraved by James Heath from the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The dedication notes that the portrait was at this time in the possession of B Langton. James Heath also engraved a different portrait of Johnson used in an earlier Dictionary, 1791 edition.
Notes
Johnson, Samuel (1709–1784), author and lexicographer, was born in Breadmarket Street, Lichfield, on 7 September 1709 (after the change of calendar in 1752 he celebrated his birthday on 18 September), the first child of Michael Johnson (1657–1731) and his wife, Sarah Ford (1669–1759); later the couple had another son, Nathaniel (1712–1737), of whom little is known apart from the fact that he went into the family trade of bookselling and did not enjoy good relations with his elder brother. Samuel's birth took place in the Johnsons' home, a new four-storey house on the corner of Breadmarket Street and the Market Square; it survives today as the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum. Overlooking the property stands St Mary's Church, where Samuel may have been baptized on 17 September 1709, although he appeared so frail at first that a baptismal ceremony was carried out in his home within hours of his birth. Attending his birth was George Hector, ‘a man-midwife of great reputation’ (Yale Edition, 1.3), whose nephew Edmund Hector (1708–1794), a Birmingham surgeon, became a close lifelong friend. As godfathers the parents chose Richard Wakefield, the town clerk, and Samuel Swynfen (c.1679–1736), a prominent local physician. The child was named after his maternal uncle Samuel Ford.
Michael Johnson's bookshop occupied the ground floor. Originally apprenticed to a member of the London trade in 1673 and made a freeman of the Stationers' Company in 1685, he had set up business in Lichfield in 1691. He published a few books and operated in other local towns on market days. In later years he also practised as a tanner and parchment manufacturer, though with little success. Michael Johnson held a number of civic offices in the borough, including those of senior bailiff and magistrate: Samuel was born during his term as sheriff. Michael was a high-churchman and possibly, as Boswell believed, a Jacobite, although outwardly at least he conformed to the Hanoverian dispensation. Plagued by ‘a vile melancholy’ that he may have passed on to his son (Boswell, Life, 1.35), he possessed some learning and ambition. At the same time he was evidently subjected to Sarah's consciousness of her own superior social origins. Awkward in company, strictly pious, and uninterested in books, she can hardly have found an ideal companion in Michael; later in life her son respected her memory, but gave little sign that he enjoyed a warm or loving relationship with his mother.
Almost immediately the parents placed Samuel in the care of a wet-nurse named Marklew, who lived in George Lane nearby. By the time he returned home a few weeks later, he was already suffering from maladies, which affected him all his days. ‘A poor, diseased infant, almost blind’ (Yale Edition, 1.5), he had an infection in his left eye and a severe case of scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymph nodes), possibly contracted from the nurse's milk. An operation was later carried out on the glands in his neck, which left visible scars. At some stage he also underwent a bout of smallpox which caused further disfigurement. When he was two, in March 1712, he was taken by his mother to London, in order to be ‘touched’ for the scrofula by Queen Anne. Johnson was almost totally deaf in his left e
Artware Fineart has dated this Samuel Johnson Oil Painting to the 18th Century.
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After Sir Joshua Reynolds, Pra Frs Frsa, 1723-1792 Portrait of Dr Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
