(d. 1754), portrait painter and dealer, of Fife; m. c.1720 Margaret Nicholson; travelled extensively in France and Italy 1715 - 45; Soc. of St Luke 1723; returned to Scotland 1745.
1716 - 17 Rome (Jan. - Jul. 1716), Florence, Venice (by 2 Apr. 1717), Padua
1718 Rome (by 17 Aug.)
1720 - 2 [dep. England May 1720] Bologna, Rome (Apr. 1721), Bologna (Jun. 1722), Rome (by Oct. - ), Padua (by 9 Nov.)
Alexander Hay had been a portrait painter studying under Medina in Scotland,1 but, as Vertue explained, having acquired a knowledge of works of art and of the great masters, he became a 'great dealer in pictures. marble busts - books &c. bronzes - had been 6 times in Italy on that account, he walked there once of twice afoot'.2
In January 1716 he sent from Rome eighteen pictures and a head to Edward Harley (2nd Earl of Oxford) at Wimpole; on 15 July 1716 in Rome Thomas Coke of Holkham recorded a payment to 'Mr Hays for Drawings', and from Florence on 13 April 1717 he made 'a present to Mr Hays'.3 But on 2 April 1717 Hay, a Scots painter, presumably Andrew, was said to have been with some Jacobites in Venice before going to Padua with William Bowes and a Mr Foster and returning to Venice with Foster; he was 'to goe to England or Scotland soon, as he sayes, to sell his pictures'.4
On 17 August 1718 'Mr Hay a painter, lately arrived here [Rome] for the third time' gave John Alexander news of Alexander Crow of Hughhead.5 Hay and Alexander together advised the 2nd Marquess of Annandale on his considerable purchases.6
Hay again set out for France and Italy in May 1720 with a commission from Harley to buy manuscripts. He bought the second half of the Valetta collection of manuscripts (the first having been bought on his previous visit), and a set of 2,420 engraved heads from Padre Orlandi in Bologna, to whom he also gave an account of Jonathan Richardson for the Abecedario.7 At Rome on 24 April 1721 Rawlinson recorded the marriage of a Mr Campbell 'to the sister of Mrs Trotter in the presence of her brother, Mr Andrew Hay, and his wife, and Mr John Smybert, a Scotsman and Painter'. Hay was in Bologna in June 1722, about to leave for Rome.8 He was still in Rome in October 1722, when he was described as one of Mr Kent's friends,9 and 'Andrea Hay virtuoso Scozese' was in Padua on 9 November 1722.(10) He had returned to England at the end of that year.
While Hay appears to have started dealing for particular clients, he subsequently bought and sold on the open market, holding frequent sales in London. It is also apparent that while he began dealing in antiquities and works of art, Hay soon came to concentrate on paintings. His name and nationality led to his being suspected of having Jacobite sympathies, but he avoided persecution by appealing to eminent clients, including Sir Robert Walpole. Hay's retirement in 1745 may have been influenced by the rising that year and the wish to avoid further suspicion.
1. See I. Pears, Discovery of Painting, 77 - 87. 2. Vertue, 3:125. See Dennistoun, 1:32 - 3. 3. Coke accts.MSS. 4. SP 99/61, f.334 (Cunningham, 2 Apr. 1717). 5. HMC Stuart, 7:169. 6. Fleming Adam, 12, 324. 7. Vertue, 3:13. 8. Rawlinson jnl.MSS (24 Apr. 1721, 3 Jun. 1722). 9. HMC Cowper, 3:122. 10. Brown 1719.