John Kay, barber and printmaker, began creating caricatures around the age of 19. He exhibited his portraits in his Edinburgh barber shop until 1785, when he started working as an artist full-time. Thereafter, he depicted ‘every figure of note in Edinburgh’, and it’s said that some of his best customers were subjects who were offended by his images and who bought his prints for the sole purpose of destroying them. The courts and the scaffold were other sources of Kay’s subject matter. This work depicts mariner Thomas Whyte (1793–1826), who was sentenced to 14 years’ transportation to New South Wales in 1814 for the crime of culpable homicide.
Kay’s prints were published in two volumes in 1837 and 1838, with further editions appearing in 1842 and 1877. His caricatures now enrich the holdings of many public collections, including the National Portrait Galleries in London and Edinburgh.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2015
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