A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings by the Late John Kay: Miniature painter, Edinburgh, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes

Very good copy of the second edition of John Kay's idiosyncratic portraits of celebrities and eccentrics in Georgian Edinburgh.

With 358 (of 360) engraved copperplates bound in four volumes. (Plates 84, Right Hon. Charles Hope, and 108, Robert Craig Esq., in Volume 2 apparently never bound in.)

With many amusing caricatures of late eighteenth century Edinburgh society, including economist Adam Smith, aeronaut Vincent Lunardi, riding master Angelo Tremamundo, philosopher Thomas Paine, author William Smellie, engraver Andrew Bell, actress Sarah Siddons, golfer Alexander McKellar, apothecary Mortar Willie, anatomist John Barclay, idiots and aristocrats, giants and little people, volunteer soldiers, lawyers, judges, chimney sweeps, sedan-chairmen, and scenes of cockfighting, cudgelling, election violence, transvestitism and ballooning. The appendix has portraits of Toussaint Louverture, John Kay himself, William Wallace, John Knox, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, Mary Queen of Scots, George III, etc,

John Kay (1742-1826), was a Scottish caricaturist, engraver and miniature painter. Apprenticed as a barber, he opened a barber shop in Edinburgh in 1771, and encouraged by the reaction to his portrait etchings, opened a print shop in 1785. His caricatures were first collected and published by Hugh Paton in 1838.

Bookplates of Major General Sir James Russell of Ashiesteel (1781-1860), who fought in India at the battle of Mahedpoor in 1830.

Original gilt- and blind-stamped ribbed decorated cloth bindings with some rippling and cracks at hinges, interior mostly clean with slight dust to page edges, one folding plate with repaired corner, good crisp impressions of the copperplate engravings.