Geikie, Walter, RSA
1795 – 1837
Deaf and dumb from age of two, he received drawing lessons from Patrick Gibson, RSA at the age of 14. Elected ARSA in 1831 and RSA in 1834. vide McEwan, Peter J : The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture (Glengarden Press, 2004), p.201. For etchings by Geikie after James Skene of Rubislaw vide RSA2014.468.McEwan (op. cit.) cites an 1830 publication by Geikie titled A Collection of Original drawings of Edinburgh and Environs (not in NLS). He is best known for the posthumous book Etchings Illustrative of Scottish Character and Scenery Executed after his own Designs, with a Biographical Introduction by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder (Edinburgh, 1841). Lauder’s book was re-issued in 1885 with additional plates and letterpress. NLS holds 2 copies of the present publication (refs; X.23.b.1(1) and Hall.1.f) but both catalogued as 1831 so presumably without the later front board present here. According to his brother Rev Archibald Geikie (writing in the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb in 1856) Geikie started under Gibson at about 15 years of age, and In May 1812 he enrolled at the Trustees' Academy, leaving with the reputation of being one of the best draughtsmen ever to have passed through its doors. He learned to etch on copper (from whom is not known) and purchased his own printing press to run these off, destroying any that didn't meet his quality control. He also states that at his death Walter Geikie "left upward of eleven hundred original sketches which are now, I believe, amongst the rich stores of the Royal Scottish Academy, of which he had for many years been a member, and by whom they are prized as a precious contribution toward the preservation of Scottish costume and character, as they appeared in the first quarter of this century."
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