Samuel Johnson
2 of 51 portraits of Samuel Johnson
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© National Portrait Gallery, London
Mid-Georgian Portraits Catalogue
Samuel Johnson
reduced copy after Sir Joshua Reynolds
mid 19th century, based on a work of circa 1769
17 3/4 in. x 15 1/4 in. (451 mm x 387 mm)
NPG 1445
This portraitback to top
A reduced and indifferent mid-19th-century copy from the Reynolds in a private collection completed in 1769 and known as the ‘Johnson Arguing’ portrait. [1] It illustrates Johnson’s mental concentration; Reynolds himself wrote how, when Johnson was excluded from conversation, ‘he remained but a few moments without speaking or listening. His mind appeared to be preying on itself; he fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gesticulations’. [2]
A studio version, painted before 1771 for Lucy Porter, Johnson's step-daughter, is in the Houghton Library, Harvard, and a copy in the Tate Gallery (N 4506). [3] A copy in crayon by Ozias Humphry was etched by Mrs Dawson Turner c.1825, [4] and Boswell listed ‘a beautiful miniature in enamel' by Humphry from the Knole portrait. [5] An unattributed miniature copy is in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch. [6]
Footnotesback to top
1) D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, I, 2000, no.1012. Exhibited RA 1770 (150); first engraved J. Watson 1770.
2) F. W. Hilles, Portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1952, p 70.
3) Respectively D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, I, 2000, nos.1013 and 1013a (and for the latter see also M. Davies, National Gallery Catalogues, The British School, 1946, pp 128-29, no.4506).
4) Illus.G. C. Williamson, Ozias Humphry, 1918, f.p.88.
5) Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill & E. F. Powell, IV, p 421n.
6) Illus. C. Holme & H. A. Kennedy, Portrait Miniatures in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch, 1917, pl.LXVII.
Provenanceback to top
Sir Henry Ellis (d. 1869); presented, as a study for the Knole picture, by T. Humphry Ward1 1906.
1 Who wrote, 5 July 1906: ‘I have it from the collection of the late Sir Henry Ellis, [chief librarian] of the British Museum’ (NPG archive).
Exhibitionsback to top
Samuel Johnson, Londoner, Royal Exchange, London, 1964; Johnson and The Thrales, Bowood, 1984 (1).
This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.
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