Mr Kéresty

This lithograph depicts a hunched, elderly man in dark clothing carrying a large cylindrical object, shown in profile with exaggerated facial features. The print exemplifies the caricature tradition established by Gillray and Rowlandson, using physical distortion and grotesque exaggeration to mock an identifiable public figure. The medium—lithography—allowed artists of this period to produce politically pointed satire rapidly and distribute it widely, a practice foundational to comic art's later development. The figure's deformity serves as the central visual joke, reflecting 19th-century satirists' routine resort to disability and bodily difference as tools of ridicule. Such prints formed a direct lineage to the comic strip's mergence of visual caricature with narrative commentary.