'Shipping' — Lord Eslington

Ward's plate presents Lord Eslington in three-quarter profile, mid-stride, dressed in the gentleman-politician uniform of the 1870s: black top hat, dark frock coat over a buttoned waistcoat, loose cravat spotted with white, and pale trousers tapering to black shoes. He clutches papers under one arm — a stock device signalling a man of commercial affairs. The caption, 'Shipping', identifies his public interest rather than his office, rooting him firmly in the mercantile-aristocratic world where landownership and maritime trade overlapped. Ward's characteristic exaggeration concentrates on the face: a bulbous reddish nose and extravagant mutton-chop whiskers push the head forward comically against a slight, receding body. There is no ethnic caricature; the satire is gently social — a well-fed grandee whose shipping interests mark him as progressive-commercial rather than merely hereditary.