Samuel Okey

Samuel Okey (fl. 1765–1780), the younger, was a British mezzotint engraver, in later life an emigrant to British North America.

Not to be confused with Samuel Okai or Samuel Oke.

Life

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. As Samuel Okey junior, he obtained premiums in 1765 and 1767 from the Society of Arts.[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. They published a portrait of Thomas Honyman there in 1774, and one of Samuel Adams in 1775. It is uncertain whether Okey remained in America or returned to England.[2][4]

Works
William Powell, engraving by Samuel Okey

Okey's first premium was for a mezzotint engraving of Nancy Reynolds, copied from that done by Charles Phillips, after a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds. 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. Cosway.[2]

Among Okey's earlier works were:[2]

  • Mrs. Anderson, after Robert Edge Pine;
  • Lady Anne Dawson, after Reynolds;
  • Miss Gunning, and The Gunnings as Hibernian Sisters;
  • Nelly O'Brien, after Reynolds;
  • William Powell the actor, after Robert Pyle;
  • Miss Green and a Lamb, after Tilly Kettle; and
  • A Burgomaster, after Frans Hals.

A print by him, A Modern Courtezan, was published in 1778, but may have been executed earlier.[2]

Notes
  1. The parents were married at St Katherine by the Tower, London, 18 August 1736, and their son Samuel (the third child given this name) was baptized at St Margaret Lothbury, 12 March 1742/3. Samuel, the father, was a freeman of the Hatbandmakers’ Company, but the apprenticeship indenture of his second son Thomas describes him as a printseller in Fleet Street [London Metropolitan Archives, ELJL/941/68]. The will of Samuel Okey, citizen & hatbandmaker of London, proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 12 December 1768, mentions his wife and three sons, but says nothing of his or their trades [National Archives (Kew), PROB 11/944, sig. 458].
  2. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1895). "Okey, Samuel" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 42. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. Clayton, Timothy. "Okey, Samuel". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20667. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. "National Portrait Gallery - Portrait - NPG D3041; Thomas Hiscox". Retrieved 5 August 2014.

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1895). "Okey, Samuel". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 42. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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