'Rufus' — Rufus Daniel Isaacs, Later First Marquess of Reading

Leslie Ward ('Spy') places Isaacs at a barrister's bench crowded with briefs tied in the traditional red tape and stacked white folios — the visual shorthand for a busy silk at the height of his practice. The caption reads simply "Rufus." Isaacs stands in bar gown and full-bottomed wig, one hand raised mid-argument, the other touching his lapel — a pose radiating confident advocacy. Ward gives him a prominent, sharply curved nose, a feature that period caricaturists habitually exaggerated on Jewish subjects; in 1904 this read as ethnic coding familiar to Vanity Fair's clubland readership. Isaacs was by then the most celebrated Jewish barrister in England, his prominence making him simultaneously admirable copy and a target for such conventions.