Kay (John)

satirising several prominent and rather self-important Scottish figures of the day, originally separately issued in 1788. The composition in five compartments follows the convention of inn signboards when names similar to this title represented the archetypes, or variations, of a king, a lord, a priest, a farmer and a soldier. In this instance, above each arch is inscribed how each figure serves ‘All’.  Below ‘I Pray for All’ is Dr. Andrew Hunter of the Tron Church, attended by John Campbell, the precentor; below ‘I Plead for All’ is Henry Erskine, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates; below I Maintain All’ is James Rocheid of Inverleith, a distinguished agriculturist and self-important laird; below ‘I Fight for All’ is Quartermaster Taylor, one of the defenders of Gibraltar; below ‘I Take All’ is the figure of Satan dancing on flames. In an inscribed copy in the British Museum, this last figure is identified as Kay, himself. 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 engraving on wove paper, 140 x 190 mm. (5 1/2 x 7 1/2 in), signed and dated 1788 in the plate, [BM Satires 7416],