John Joshua Kirby (1716, Wickham Market – 1774, Kew), was an 18th century landscape painter, engraver, and writer from the United Kingdom, famed for his pamphlet on linear perspective based on Brook Taylor's math.
He was the son of John Kirby (topographer), and the father of the writer Sarah Trimmer and the engraver William Kirby. Kirby was made an honorary member of the painter William Hogarth's instructional project, the St Martin’s Lane Academy, where he lectured on perspective. Hogarth later made his famous print, Satire on False Perspective, as the frontispiece to Kirby's famous pamphlet published in 1754 called Dr. Brook Taylor's Method of Perspective made Easy both in Theory and Practice. The pamphlet was very popular and was reprinted several times. His fame became such that it gained Kirby a royal appointment.
According to the RKD he moved in 1755 to London, and then in 1760 he moved to Kew, where he taught linear perspective to George III of the United Kingdom.[1]