The Disencumbering (Or, the Losing of John Kay)
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The Disencumbering (or, The Losing of John Kay) By Johnny Rodger The verbal noun of the main title above is an political simplicity and clarity, is itself an example architectural term. It is given to that operation of the disencumbering aesthetic: ‘The millennial whereby city improvers, particularly those of monuments of our history,’ he said, ‘must loom the 19th century, sought to remove adjacent gigantic in their necessary solitude.’ construction, seen as auxiliary, supplementary, and non-original to the architectural integrity of One early example of disencumbering, and one a principal public building. The feeling is that any which is of particular interest to us here, was particular important public building in question that which was performed on St Giles, Edinburgh. ought to be seen as a pure architectural object, A well-known painting ‘The Parliament Close and can, through disencumbering, be liberated and Public Chambers of Edinburgh 50 Years from parasitic construction. Since’ (1855) shows a view of the church from the south across a crowded The illustration here shows Parliament Close, before the a plan of Karlskirche, Vienna, operation took place. The south before and after being side of St Giles is shown here ‘disencumbered’, when auxiliary as obscured by a ramshackle construction was removed from collection of ‘luckenbooths’ – around the main building and the goldsmiths’ and jewellers’ shops, square surrounding it redesigned etc. – built up against the church to form a platonic volume wall, and there is even a washing- carved out of the urban fabric. line hung across one of the giant gothic windows. The high point of ‘disencumbering’ was the 19th In 1817 these buildings, and also century and as an historical those which crowded up to phenomenon, it is thus not the other sides of the church unrelated to the grand style (including the Old Tolbooth of Haussmanisation – that to the west) were removed, attempt to clear away medieval and the church was reduced construction and twisted more or less, to its present narrow streets, and to drive disencumbered dimensions. major, broad boulevards through One interesting point about the city, lined with ashlar-faced this painting is that not only and carved bourgeois apartment was it painted some decades blocks. Like Haussmanisation, after those adjacent shops had disencumbering was a pan- been removed from around European phenomenon, and its the church, but it was the joint effects can be seen in the open, clear views we production of numerous artists, including Sir have of such monuments as the Milan Duomo, of David Wilkie, Alexander Nasmyth, David Roberts, Notre Dame in Paris, and of course, of Glasgow Clarkson Stanfield, James Wilson, and two called Cathedral, which latter had two asymmetrical Frazer and Williamson. and irregular western towers, built between the 13th-15th centuries, removed in the 1840s by There is however, one curious omission in Victorian formal purists. The phenomenon of the generally acknowledged roll-call of artists disencumbering was then arguably continued involved – namely John Kay. into the 20th century, with the Italian fascists being amongst the most active proponents. It John Kay was an artist and sometime barber may always be crude to quote from Mussolini, who from the 1780s until his death (1826) but sometimes it is irresistible. After clearing produced hundreds of etchings of characters the medieval slum of Borgo Pio away from the inhabiting Edinburgh at the time. Although walls of the Vatican and opening up a view of St Kay had been long dead before the painting Peter’s from the Tiber, Il Duce’s comment, in its was produced, reproductions of his 18th and 8 the drouth 19th century characters are included in the that could have been reproduced by any crowds. Indeed they form the majority of the mode of art. persons visible, presumably put there in the hope of introducing a ready-made authenticity Yet it is precisely that idea of Kay as providing to the scene. As it happens John Kay’s barber’s accurate depiction, an historical document, which shop where he worked and where he hung his seems to be the ground from which existing etchings in the window, stood itself on the south opinion of his lack of artistic merit has been side of Parliament Close and the view shown launched. In their book on Kay published in the here is substantially that (albeit from a different early 70s H & M Evans make a powerful and angle) which he would have observed from his comprehensive case for the rehabilitation of his window. But why, if authenticity is in any way the purely artistic reputation. But nonetheless even name of the artistic game here, has John Kay’s they feel it necessary to preface with an apology name regularly been omitted or forgotten when for the barber in Kay: it came to credits for this work? As documents, his prints are clearly It can be argued that this tacit removal of his of unique value; as works of art their name from artistic history is an extreme case in appeal is less immediately obvious. the treatment of John Kay and his work. He is, after all, generally acknowledged as one of the Thus when Kay is not being erased from or main historical sources for our knowledge of completely ignored by artistic history, the value precisely how the characters – both famous and of his work as art is being denied. And there is less so – of Enlightenment late 18th and early a long tradition of such denial. The 9th edition 19th century Edinburgh actually looked. In his of Encyclopaedia Britannica says of him that he 900 or so etchings (around 600 have been ’lost’) had ‘little strictly artistic power’ and Sir Herbert Kay not only portrayed the ordinary people of Maxwell in his history of Edinburgh says in a the town – beggars, preachers, workers, soldiers, somewhat pot-callingly unmeritorious prose: pipers, lawyers, oyster-sellers, dandies – but ‘Being self-taught, Kay’s work is of negligible also many of the key intellectual figures of the merit.’ And in the recently published Scottish Art Enlightenment alongside. He is for example the (2000) by Murdo MacDonald, Kay is afforded author of the only known likeness from life of only two sentences in the whole history, and Adam Smith. And that his etchings did indeed even within that tight fit the writer takes care to present us with a true ‘likeness’ to their models stress how derivative is Kay’s work. is what’smore, not doubted by those who ought to have known. Robert Chambers in his But all this denial and negativity here surely Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen wrote only creates in the inquisitive mind a greater hunger to see the actual work. What exactly To speak of his portraits as caricatures is being dismissed repeatedly here and why? is doing them signal injustice. They were If Kay’s oeuvre does indeed constitute an the most exact and faithful likenesses important historical document then is not the drouth that merit sufficient in itself – why the need barber’s shop cum studio/display window across to go further and simultaneously dismiss the the square, was not an isolated architectural possibility of artistic talent into the bargain? phenomenon, but part of a city-wide upheaval. This is Enlightenment Edinburgh, so where is The middle classes were not only removing a the difficulty, in its rational light, in distinguishing perceived undesirable clutter of structures from virtues and giving due praise? Is there not, in around the main church in Edinburgh to leave it fact, a whiff of snobbery, of class distinction, sitting free and open in its own space, but they and exclusivity in these comments? And does it were clearing themselves out of the medieval not appear that we are certainly no further in town, to settle in a newly-built neo-classical a general resolution and understanding of this town of wide streets and palace-fronted ashlar conundrum than we were before the Evans’s stone houses. The middle classes had, in effect, publication in the 1970s? Are there indeed, social since the 1780s (when Kay had begun his artistic reasons, no less valid and operative now than career) been gradually abandoning the densely they were in the late 18th century, behind the populated and built-up Old Town, with its mix choice to keep forgetting the artist, John Kay? of all the social classes and social activities, for the social monoculture and the planned order All those questions can only emphasise how of open streets and squares in Edinburgh New important it is that his work should not only Town. Indeed the architect Archibald Elliot, who remain in the public realm in some form, but undertook the job of remodelling the new freed that it should be brought continually to public St Giles, was a noted designer of churches and attention. Fortunately Sheila Szatkowski has other monuments in the New Town. done just that for us, by publishing a selection of 100 etchings, reproduced from the posthumous Edinburgh had grown up as a city along the edition (published in 1837, again in 1842, escarpment of the Castle Rock, spreading down and again in 1877, after which last the plates the ridge from the royal castle at the top to the were destroyed) by Paton and Patterson. It royal palace at the bottom. Along the summit is interesting that in Szatkowski’s volume the of this ridge was an open public space – called etchings are accompanied by text which draws the High Street, but rather an elongated market on the copious notes and anecdotes written place than an actual street.