In Vanity Fair — Winter Supplement Collage

This double-page chromolithograph gathers over twenty individual Vanity Fair caricature portraits — each originally issued separately — onto a single theatrical stage, the caption reading "In Vanity Fair." Foreground figures, labeled in small type, include Lord Hartington, Louis Pasteur, Pablo de Sarasate, George Grossmith, Henry Irving, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, HRH the Duke of Connaught in scarlet uniform, and Mr T.P. O'Connor, among others. Behind them, framed like hung pictures or painted backdrops, earlier plates are quoted verbatim: Sarasate with his violin, Grossmith in evening dress. Augustus Harris peers in through a side window. The conceit — celebrities as exhibits in their own gallery — gently satirises the magazine's own franchise of fame, flattering subjects and readers alike by placing society, politics, and the stage on one communal platform.