'He might have been a King' — The Duke of Saldanha

James Tissot's chromolithograph presents João Carlos Saldanha de Oliveira Daun — Portuguese field marshal, statesman, and sometime prime minister — seated heavily in a plain chair, legs spread, hands resting on his thighs. White hair erupts above a walrus moustache; small pince-nez perch incongruously on a broad face. The purple bow-tie and white waistcoat strain against a considerable girth, lending him an air of comfortable, faded grandeur. The caption, 'He might have been a King,' cuts both ways: an acknowledgment of Saldanha's extraordinary career spanning the Napoleonic wars and three Portuguese regimes, and a dry note that his monarchical ambitions always fell just short. Tissot's caricature is sympathetic by Vanity Fair standards — age and bulk gently mocked, authority still legible beneath them.