'A Peninsular Veteran' — The Marquis of Tweeddale

Pellegrini places the portly, ruddy-faced Marquis of Tweeddale in profile on a carriage box, reins bunched in yellow-gloved hands, a fur-collared greatcoat swaddling his bulk and a grey topper crowning the composition. The caption 'A Peninsular Veteran' anchors his identity in the Napoleonic Wars: Tweeddale served under Wellington in the Iberian Peninsula, a pedigree that by 1876 carried the nostalgic glamour of a vanishing generation. The caricature is genial rather than savage — Pellegrini exaggerates the florid complexion and swelling girth common to elderly aristocrats in these plates, flattering the subject's patrician ease even while gently mocking it. The comedy is purely one of class and comfortable age.