'The Foreign Office' — Lord Tenterden

Signed Ape (Carlo Pellegrini), this chromolithograph caricatures Charles Stuart Aubrey Abbott, 3rd Baron Tenterden, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office. The figure is rendered in strict profile: a stout, slightly stooped gentleman in charcoal frock coat and grey top hat, hands tucked behind his back with bureaucratic self-containment. The most aggressive element is the face — an enormous rust-red beard overwhelms his features, amplified by Pellegrini's habitual exaggeration of ruddy complexion and a bulbous nose. The caption, 'The Foreign Office,' identifies the man by his institution rather than his title, a characteristically sardonic Vanity Fair deflation of official dignity. Tenterden negotiated at the 1878 Congress of Berlin; the plate captures a senior civil servant at the height of his quiet, unglamorous power.