'A Turf Reformer' — Henry Chaplin, M.P.

Pellegrini renders Henry Chaplin — Conservative M.P., landowner, and passionate racing man — as a broad, ruddy-faced figure in a dark frock coat, top hat, cream trousers, and boutonnière, cane dangling loosely from one gloved hand. The caption 'A turf reformer' is gently ironic: Chaplin loved horse-racing far too well to reform it seriously, and readers would have caught the joke. Pellegrini exaggerates his subject's considerable girth and florid complexion — the ruddy cheeks and auburn whiskers are markers of the hard-living English squire type, a social rather than ethnic caricature common in Vanity Fair's gallery of sporting gentlemen. The artist's 'Ape' signature appears lower right.