In my last post I mentioned the work of John Kay, the caricaturist, engraver and miniature painter. Kay was born in 1742. His early life was not idyllic after the death of his father, when he was six. Despite this, the young Kay showed great skill in drawing, and his success persuaded him to set up his own print business in Parliament Close, behind St Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh in 1817.
Kay's endearing images were drawn from clients, who were the principal nobility and gentry of Edinburgh and its environs, whom he encountered during his apprenticeship to George Heriot, a barber. Although mainly gently-humoured and sympathetic to his subjects, he could be as sharp as is barber's razor, with angry victims sometimes buying prints of themselves, just to tear them up.
I acquired a small collection of these engravings, which I had intended to use for a black and white collection of ceramics. My less ambitious endeavours might see me framing these, when I acquire something akin to a gallery for the growing floor-stacked collection of pictures of varying degrees of interest, value and media.
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