Samuel Okey

Samuel Okey, eldest surviving son of Samuel Okey, a printseller in Fleet Street, London, and his wife Mary Atterbury, was born in the City of London on 21 February 1742.

[1] Nothing is known of his training as a mezzotint engraver, but those of his prints that are signed “Samuel Okey junior” were probably produced before the death of his father in 1768.

[2] In 1770 he engraved a print Sweets of Liberty, after John Collett; this was published by him and Charles Reak, near Temple Bar, and it exhibits Wilkite sympathies.

[3] In 1773 the names Okey and Reak appear as joint publishers of an engraved portrait by Okey of the Baptist minister Thomas Hiscox after Robert Feke; and as "print sellers and stationers on the Parade", Newport, Rhode Island.

In 1767 he exhibited at the Incorporated Society of Artists an engraving of An Old Man with a Scroll after Reynolds, and in 1768 A Mezzotinto after Mr.