'Henry' — Lt-Col Henry Stracy

Signed by Ape (Carlo Pellegrini), this chromolithograph caricatures Lt-Col Henry Stracy, identified only by the single caption word Henry beneath the plate. Stracy appears in full fencing whites — buttoned jacket, knee breeches, laced boots — posed in a relaxed between-bouts stance, épée lowered in his gloved right hand, left fist on hip, mask resting at his feet. Pellegrini exaggerates the colonel's sharp profile and bristling cavalry moustache, the hallmarks of his caricature method: elongated nose, jutting chin, compressed torso. The portrait carries no overt political charge; it celebrates a gentleman-sportsman at the height of the fencing revival promoted by London's fashionable clubs, framing amateur swordsmanship as an emblem of aristocratic masculine refinement.