The Nurse

This wood engraving presents a female figure labeled 'The Nurse'—a woman holding a basin, her face exaggerated and her clothing disheveled. The print exemplifies Victorian satirical tradition descending from Hogarth and Gillray, using physical exaggeration and social commentary. Character-based satire combining physiognomic distortion with narrative scene established visual conventions that fed directly into nineteenth-century comic periodicals and eventually the comic strip form, where caricature remained the dominant mode of characterization.