John Walter III, 'The Times'

Leslie Ward ('Spy') caricatures John Walter III — MP and proprietor-editor of The Times — in this chromolithograph plate captioned simply 'The Times,' identifying the man entirely with his institution. Ward exaggerates Walter's stooped, forward-leaning posture and oversized, hook-nosed profile, a physiognomic shorthand the magazine routinely deployed to suggest cunning or authority depending on the subject's standing. The dark double-breasted frock coat and watch-chain signal respectable Victorian power. Politically the image is ambivalent: The Times under Walter was editorially independent but conservative-leaning, and presenting its proprietor as a bent, somewhat ponderous figure gently deflates the paper's thundering self-importance without seriously undermining it — the Vanity Fair house style for men too powerful to mock outright.