John Dillon, MP — 'the Plan of Campaign'

Signed by Ape (Carlo Pellegrini) and published in Vanity Fair on 7 May 1887, this chromolithograph caricatures John Dillon, Irish Nationalist MP and agrarian agitator, at the height of the Plan of Campaign controversy — the tenant-rent strategy that had thrown Anglo-Irish relations into crisis. Pellegrini renders Dillon in profile: a lean, slightly stooped figure in a dark frock coat and tan trousers, top hat pulled low, hands pocketed, his long beard giving him a severe, conspiratorial air. The exaggerated forward hunch and withdrawn posture suggest secrecy and stubbornness rather than parliamentary swagger. The caption, 'the Plan of Campaign,' is both identification and indictment, framing Dillon not as a legislator but as an organiser of rural resistance — a reading entirely congenial to Vanity Fair's Unionist-leaning readership.