John Bright, 'Ape' (Carlo Pellegrini), Vanity Fair, 1869

Pellegrini signs this third plate in the Vanity Fair Statesmen series with his familiar moniker 'Ape.' The chromolithograph shows Bright in three-quarter view, shuffling forward in a black frock coat and silk top hat, a walking cane loose in one meaty hand. His white mutton-chop hair and heavy, sullen jowl are pushed to caricature extremes — the ruddy, bull-necked Quaker tribune rendered as a prosperous but slightly lumbering figure. The original caption asks: 'Will the sentimental orator be lost in the practical Minister, or will both be extinguished?' — a pointed question about whether Gladstone's new Cabinet had domesticated the Radical lion. Bright's free-trade oratory and anti-Corn Law agitation made him a hero to the manufacturing classes; the cartoon wonders, wryly, whether ministerial office would silence that voice.