Kay (John)

a simple play on words and names satirising the election, in 1793, of George Baird as Principal of Edinburgh University, at the age of only 32. He is shown here with his enormous beard, being congratulated by his father-in-law, Thomas Elder, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh. The main title is identified as a biblical quote from the Book of Romans, chapter 9, verse 12.  From the posthumously published ‘A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings by the Late John Kay, Miniature Painter, Edinburgh’.

John Kay (1742-1826) was born in Dalkeith where he became apprenticed to a barber at the age of 13. He moved to Edinburgh as a young man in the 1760s, still plying his trade as a member of the corporation of barber-surgeons. But, in 1784, he produced his first etching and was soon encouraged to convert his premises to a print shop, such was the popularity of his caricatures and portraits of local characters and figures of the day. The first published collection, gathered together by the Edinburgh publisher, Hugh Paton, didn’t appear until over a decade after Kay’s death, in 1838, with subsequent re-issues in 1842 and 1877, before the printing plates were formally destroyed,

hand-coloured stipple-engraving on wove paper, 130 x 95 mm. (5 1/8 x 3 3/4 in), signed and dated 1793 in the plate, [BM Satires 8369],