James Woodburn

Ward's chromolithograph presents Woodburn in full jockey's kit: coral-red silks with gilt buttons, ballooning white breeches, tan-topped black boots, and a black cap trimmed with a yellow feather. He stands three-quarter profile, riding crop in his left hand, right fist planted on his hip — the pose of easy authority Ward habitually assigned to sporting men. The caption reads simply James Woodburn. The caricature is mild by the magazine's own standards: the face is sharpened and the jaw compressed, but the figure is otherwise respectful, even flattering. Woodburn was a prominent flat-race jockey of the late Victorian turf; Vanity Fair's selection of him signals how thoroughly professional racing had penetrated fashionable society by 1890, its practitioners now deemed worthy of the same satirical honor accorded politicians and peers.