Walter Geikie

Before he had the advantage of the instruction of a master he had attained considerable proficiency in sketching both figures and landscapes from nature, and in 1812 he was admitted into the drawing academy of the board of Scottish manufactures.

[1] In the 1830s Walter was living with his father, Archibald Geikie, a hairdresser and perfumer, at 2 Drummond Street in the south side of the city.

[2] Owing to his want of feeling for color, Geikie was not a successful painter in oils, but he sketched in India ink with great truth and humor the scenes and characters of Scottish lower-class life in his native city.

A series of etchings which exhibit very high excellence were published by him in 1829-1831 and a collection of eighty-one of these was republished posthumously in 1841, with a biographical introduction by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart.

[1] Duncan Macmillan has described him as producing "images that are absolutely radical in their assertion of the inalienable nature of human dignity.