Henry Joseph Wood, 'Queen's Hall'

Spy's full-length caricature catches the thirty-seven-year-old conductor mid-beat: right arm raised high, baton aloft, left hand drawn to his chest, the whole figure balanced on the ball of one foot with theatrical élan. Wood wears a frock coat and a large polka-dot bow tie — the artistic bohemian's badge — his dark beard and moustache lightly exaggerated in the manner of the series. The caption, Queen's Hall, anchors him to the Langham Place venue where he had just launched the Promenade Concerts that would bear his name into the next century. The portrait is admiring rather than satirical, reflecting Wood's considerable public prestige by 1907.