Blinking Sam

Portrait of Samuel Johnson, also known as Blinking Sam, is an oil-painted portrait of English lexicographer Samuel Johnson reading, created by English artist Joshua Reynolds around 1775. The painting highlights Johnson's vision problems, which led Johnson to deride the painting and say that he would not be "Blinking Sam", as quoted in Hester Thrale's Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson. The artwork has since been noted to be the "best-known" portrait of Johnson, and became an Internet meme in 2012. The painting is located at The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, United States, where it is on display.

Portrait of Samuel Johnson, also known as Blinking Sam, is an oil-painted portrait of English lexicographer Samuel Johnson reading, created by English artist Joshua Reynolds around 1775. The painting highlights Johnson's vision problems, which led Johnson to deride the painting and say that he would not be "Blinking Sam", as quoted in Hester Thrale's Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson. The artwork has since been noted to be the "best-known" portrait of Johnson, and became an Internet meme in 2012. The painting is located at The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, United States, where it is on display. featuring the painting|alt=Social media post with text caption above: "When you are the writer of the first English dictionary and a great scholar but somehow became a meme." Below caption are attached two images of different oil paintings side-by-side: the image on the left is of a man in a wig reading by holding a book close to his face and squinting; the image on the right is of the same man staring forward. UCI professor of English Robert Folkenflik connected Reynolds' self-portrait and his portrait of Johnson to a Dutch tradition of representing the human senses in art. In his biography of Johnson, Kai Kin Yung suggests the portrait was intended to be a joke, and then states that "Reynolds's painting triumphantly transformed his friend's defect into an engaging study." In Dr Johnson's Heart, Daniel Cook says that the artwork is the "best-known" portrait of Johnson. Susan Rather notes that Reynolds often made more introspective and singular likenesses of close friends in private contexts, which explains Johnson's focus on reading, rather than on the viewer. English art critic William Hazlitt commented that the portrait "has altogether that sluggishness of outward appearance,—that want of quickness and versatility,—that absorption of faculty, and look of purblind reflection, which were characteristic of his mind."

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