Alfred Lyttelton, Cricketer

Signed Ape (Carlo Pellegrini), this chromolithograph caricatures Alfred Lyttelton—England wicketkeeper, Eton and Cambridge man, future Cabinet minister—crouched behind the stumps in full keeping gear: padded gauntlets spread wide, pads strapped to his shins, a striped cummerbund at his waist, and a colour-banded cap perched atop an exaggeratedly large-nosed, mustachioed profile. Pellegrini's signature comic device is the swollen head on a trim athletic body, here deployed affectionately rather than savagely. The composition flatters Lyttelton's sporting elegance while gently mocking his aristocratic intensity. The plate belongs to Vanity Fair's long run of gentleman-amateur sportsmen, celebrating the amateur ideal at the precise moment professional cricket was beginning to challenge it.