Samuel Johnson

In 1746 journalist and author Samuel Johnson was hired by a group of booksellers to produce a definitive English Dictionary. He was paid 1500 guineas, enabling him to take a house in London’s Gough Square, where this portrait now hangs.
It was in this house that he worked on the Dictionary that would become Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
It was here that he also developed a friendship with a former Jamaican slave, Francis Barber; Francis became his servant, companion and ultimately his heir.