Kay (John)

depicting the remarkable character, William Wilson (1709-1815) with the large mortar and pestle of his work as a drug grinder. He moved to Edinburgh in 1778 where he found employment with various apothecaries and chemists before retiring at the grand old age of 106. 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 apprentced 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. 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, 190 x 150 mm. (7 1/2 x 6 in), signed and dated 1815 in the plate,