'Corney Grain' — Spy (Sir Leslie Ward)

Chromolithograph plate from Vanity Fair's 'Men of the Day' series, captioned 'Corney Grain' and signed Spy. The caricature renders Richard Corney Grain — barrister turned drawing-room entertainer — as a conspicuously corpulent figure in black evening coat and white cravat, seated at a piano stool. His left hand rests on the keys while his right gestures upward mid-song, mouth open, eyes half-closed in theatrical rapture. Ward exaggerates Grain's considerable bulk as the visual joke: the tiny stool barely contains him. The portrait reflects Grain's genuine celebrity on the London concert circuit, where his comic musical sketches at the Egyptian Hall made him a fixture of respectable, middle-class entertainment throughout the 1870s and 1880s.