whose satirical etchings and miniature portraits provide such a penetrating insight into the society of Regency Edinburgh, was born near Dalkeith, a few miles to the south-east of the capital. At about the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to George Heriot, a barber in Dalkeith. In 1771 Kay set up a successful hairdressing business in Edinburgh, having become a member of the Society of Surgeon-Barbers. At the same time he developed his skills as an amateur portraitist, and received patronage from William Nisbet of Dirleton, a wealthy landowner in East Lothian. Kay’s small-scale etchings and portraits met with considerable success, to the extent that in 1785 he abandoned his trade as a barber and worked as a professional artist, working from a small print shop on the south side of Parliament Square.
Over the following three decades he portrayed many of the great – and the not so good – of Edinburgh society, including public figures such as Adam Smith, Admiral Duncan and Deacon Brodie, as well as street vendors, criminals and prostitutes. Kay’s incisive little etchings, representing a broad spectrum of Edinburgh’s social classes, can be contrasted to the grand oil portraiture of the Scottish establishment painted by his contemporary Sir Henry Raeburn. About 360 of Kay’s etchings were published posthumously by subscription in two volumes during 1837 and 1838 by Hugh Paton, an Edinburgh carver and gilder.
