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HomeVanity Fair: Men of the DayMen of the Day: The Vanity Fair Caricatures › Sir Peter Carlaw Walker, Bart. — 'Peter'
Sir Peter Carlaw Walker, Bart. — 'Peter' by Leslie Ward
Public domain · digitally restored by ComicBooks.com
Men of the Day: The Vanity Fair Caricatures

Sir Peter Carlaw Walker, Bart. — 'Peter'

Leslie Ward · Vanity Fair, 8 June 1905. Chromolithograph by Leslie Ward ('Spy').

Spy's plate presents Walker as a prosperous Edwardian sportsman-gentleman: tweed knickerbockers suit in warm ochre check, white spatterdashes buttoned to the knee, black Oxfords, and a bowler hat cocked forward. He holds a smoking cigarette in one hand and a malacca cane in the other, tucking a red-covered volume under his arm — the pose of a man at a race meeting rather than a counting house. The caption reads simply 'Peter', the familiar address signalling insider clubability. Walker, Scottish brewer and baronet, embodied the Liberal Unionist money that purchased landed respectability in late-Victorian Britain. No ethnic caricature operates here; the comedy is purely social — new industrial wealth dressed, perhaps a shade too carefully, in the costume of the old sporting squirearchy.

About this artifact

Creator
Leslie Ward
Date
Vanity Fair, 8 June 1905. Chromolithograph by Leslie Ward ('Spy').
Rights
Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
Restoration
Digitally restored and hosted by ComicBooks.com.

Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.