James Anthony Froude, 'Men of the Day No. 38'

Cecioni draws the historian James Anthony Froude in profile beside a fireplace, his body exaggerated into a hunched, forward-leaning column of black coat over pale trousers — the posture of a man perpetually brooding. The caption reads: 'He created Henry VIII, exploded Mary Stuart, and demolished Elizabeth' — a pointed summary of Froude's twelve-volume History of England (1856–70), which rehabilitated Henry, attacked Mary Queen of Scots as a Catholic schemer, and cut Elizabeth down from Protestant legend. Froude was genuinely controversial: Protestant partisans cheered him, Catholic and Whig historians accused him of cherry-picking documents. Cecioni's caricature carries no ethnic distortion; the mockery is purely intellectual — a vain demolisher of queens, warming himself at his own fire.