Hugh Childers, 'A Returned Colonist'

Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') caricatures Hugh Culling Eardley Childers, Liberal politician and First Lord of the Admiralty under Gladstone, in a plate captioned 'A returned colonist' — a reference to his years as Victoria's first Auditor-General before entering Westminster. The figure is rendered in three-quarter profile: a stout body squeezed into a dark frock coat, a voluminous auburn beard exaggerated to comic proportion, a black top hat, and a red dispatch box in hand — the last detail anchoring his ministerial rank. Pellegrini's signature rotundity gag does political work: Childers was already controversial over Royal Navy reforms, and the caption's colonial reference distinguishes him within the Statesmen series.