Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (Plympton 1723 - London 1792)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1769 - 1770 (exh at RA)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
815 x 665 mm
Order this imageCollection
Knole, Kent
NT 129933
Caption
Dr Johnson, the celebrated writer, dictionary-compiler and conversationalist, was a close friend of Reynolds, referring to the artist as ‘the only man whom I call a friend’. A brilliant networker and bon vivant, Reynolds founded the Literary Club with Johnson in 1764. Its original members included Edmund Burke, Bennet Langton (NT 637611) and Oliver Goldsmith. Here Johnson is shown in profile, wigless, like a classical philosopher or poet in the throes of creation. Several variations are known, one of which is described as Dr Johnson Arguing (Tate). Contemporary accounts suggest Johnson was known for his elaborate hand gestures. As with the portrait of Goldsmith (NT 129929), it was believed to have been originally painted for Reynolds himself, and bought by the 3rd Duke at a later date. The portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1770.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) by Sir Joshua Reynolds (Plympton 1723 - London 1792), circa 1769-70. A half-length portrait of Johnson aged 60, his eyes partly closed, gesturing with his hands, with short brown hair, and wearing a brown coat with open neck. A copy, now in the Tate collection, is catalogued as 'Dr Johnson Arguing'.
Full description
Reynolds’s sister Frances described Johnson’s characteristic hand gestures as strange: ‘sometimes he would hold them up, with some of his fingers bent, as if he had been seized with the cramp, and sometimes at his Breast in motion like those of a jockey on full speed; and often would he lift them up as high as he could stretch over his head, for some minutes’ (quoted by Kai Kin Yung, in exh.cat. Arts Council, 1984, no.69). In spite of Herman W. Liebert’s objections that Reynolds would not have combined an idealized likeness with a realistic but unflattering presentation of the hands (‘Portraits of the Author: Lifetime Likenesses of Samuel Johnson’, English Portraits of the 17th and 18th centuries, UCLA, Los Angeles 1974, 45-88, 55), it seems that that is just what he has done. Nicholas Penny described it as a ‘dignified version’ of Johnson’s well-known gesticulations (exh.cat. RA 1986, 240). Nevertheless, David Piper saw the portrait as a whole as cast into a ‘purely classic and heroic mould, minus wig and plus toga, a peripatetic philosopher, almost physically wrenching reason into words (The Image of the Poet: British Poets and their Portraits, Oxford 1982, 93). Piper earlier described it as ‘a heroic portrait, with in this case surely a prototype from some Roman or central Italian painting behind it’ (‘The Development of the British Literary Portrait up to Samuel Johnson’, read 10 January 1968, Proceedings of the British Academy, liv, 1970, 51-72, 1968, 71), but no such prototype has ever been identified. Certainly the profile is rare in Reynolds’ oeuvre, and it may well have been thought appropriate to a classical scholar. [Paragraph quoted, with minor amendments, from Mannings 2000, no.1012, p.281.] Johnson was a close friend of the artist. When Reynolds was ill in 1764, Johnson wrote: 'If I should lose you I should lose almost the only man whom I call a friend.' It is therefore difficult, on the one hand, to be sure which of the appointments with Johnson in Reynolds’s pocket-books were for sittings rather than social calls, and on the other, not to assume that there were occasions when Johnson called upon Reynolds without an appointment, and had further, unrecorded, sittings. Nonetheless, it is hard to accept that the five appointments with Johnson in 1762 were for the present picture, with no more until 1766. It also seems unlikely that this and the portrait of Goldsmith were painted for the 3rd Duke of Dorset in 1766-70, when no payment is recorded for either in Reynolds’s ledgers, and in the face of the clear record in the Duke’s own account book, that he paid for both in 1778. Much more likely is it that Reynolds painted both sitters, as his friends, for himself (and possibly so as also to enhance the prestige of his studio by having them hanging there), and that only later was he prevailed upon by his newer friend, the 3rd Duke, to sell them to him. The portrait of Johnson listed by Richard Onely in his General Account of Tunbridge Wells and its Environs (London, 1771, p.50), as amongst those of poets in the Dining Parlour at Knole seems either to have been another picture or an error (he does not list the pendant of Goldsmith, whose claims to be a poet were much more substantial).
Provenance
On loan from the Trustees of the Sackville Estate.
Makers and roles
Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (Plympton 1723 - London 1792), artist
References
Penny (ed.), 1986: Reynolds, Royal Academy, 1986, cat. 73, p.240 Mannings 2000: David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings. The Subject Pictures catalogued by Martin Postle, New Haven & London 2000, no.736, p.220 & fig. 1004