'Cotillon': Augustus Saville Lumley

Signed by 'Ape'—Carlo Pellegrini, Vanity Fair's Italian-born caricaturist—this chromolithograph depicts Augustus Saville Lumley, identified by the caption 'Cotillon.' Lumley stands full-length in white-tie evening dress, hands clasped at his chest in a posture of theatrical self-satisfaction. Pellegrini's signature exaggeration inflates the head to nearly half the figure's height, the red mutton-chop whiskers fanning outward like a lion's mane and the round, flushed face suggesting a man pleased with his own performance. The body tapers to small, neat feet—a compositional trick Pellegrini used to combine pomposity with comic fragility. The plate belongs to Vanity Fair's 'Men of the Day' series, which used affectionate mockery to fix the social and professional vanities of Victorian public life in permanent, collectible form.