Portrait of Dr Samuel Johnson 1709 -1784, English Poet, Essayist, Critic, Journalist, Lexicographer, Conversationalist, After Sir Joshua Raynolds

Size: 30.00 x 25.00 ins, oil on canvas

The original portrait was painted between 1772 and 1778, the Portrait was sold by Hester on 10 May 1816 (68) to G. Watson Taylor for £378; Taylor sale by Robins at Eristoke, 25 July 1832 (150), bought by Sir Robert Peel; bought by the National Gallery in 1871; transferred to the Tate Gallery where it now hangs.

English poet, essayist, critic, journalist, lexicographer, conversationalist, regarded as one of the outstanding figures of 18th-century life and letters. Johnson's literary reputation is part dependent on James Boswell's (1740-1795) biography The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. (1791), with whom he formed one of the most famous friendships in literary history. The writer Ford Madox Ford has considered Johnson the most tragic figures of English literature, "whose still living writings are always ignored, a great honest man who will remain forever a figure of half fun because of the leechlike adoration of the greatest and most ridiculous of all biographers. For it is impossible not to believe that, without Boswell, Johnson for us today would shine like a sun in the heavens whilst Addison sat forgotten in coffee houses." (from The March of Literature, 1938) – Johnson became Doctor Johnson when Dublin University gave him the honorary degree in 1765. He had a huge, strong athletic build, his appetite was legendary and it is said that he often drank over 25 cups of tea at one sitting.

"One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts."

Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfeld, the son of a bookseller. His childhood was marred by ill health: a tubercular infection affected both his sight and hearing and his face was scarred by scrofula. Johnson was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford. His father died in 1731 and left the family in poverty. Johnson's studies were cut short and he returned to Lichfield, affected by depression which haunted him for his life. He worked as a teacher at the grammar school in Market Bosworth and published his first essays in the Birmingham Journal. In 1735 he married Mrs Elisabeth Porter, a widow 20 years his senior. They started a school at Edial, near Lichfeld, but the school did not prosper. Johnson's lack of degree and convulsive mannerisms hindered his success as a teacher. Two years later they moved to London where Johnson worked for Edward Cave, the founder of The Gentleman's Magazine. When he applied to a publisher for employment, he was found unfit for the job. "You had better get a porter's knot and carry trunks," he was advised.

The death of the poet Richard Savage, who was Johnson friend, gave rise in 1743 to his first biographical work. He addressed to Lord Chesterfield his Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language in 1747 and worked for eight years with the project. Lord Chesterfield refused to support Johnson while he was at work on his dictionary and later Johnson wrote: "This man I thought had been a Lord among wits; but I find, he is only a wit among Lords." A patron was in his Dictionary "one who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery." Johnson's longest poem, THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES, appeared in 1749. On that same year his tragedy IRENE was staged and appeared at Drury Lane. Between the years 1750 and 1752 he edited Cave's magazine The Rambler, writing nearly all of its numbers. When Cave died in 1754 Johnson wrote a life of the bookseller for The Gentleman's Magazine. Johnson's working method was complex: he first made a rough draft, then "turned over in his mind all the Latin words into which the sentence could be formed. Finally, he made up Latin-derived English words to convey his sense." (from The March of the Literature).

A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE was published finally in 1755, and the abridged edition in 1756.