Reginald Ward ('Count Ward')

Spy renders Ward in crisp profile, walking left with the self-possessed stride of a man who has purchased his way into London society. He wears white-tie evening dress beneath a dark frock coat — the uniform of the plutocrat at play — and sports a neat waxed moustache. The plate carries no satirical caption beyond the implied joke: a Boston 'copper king' whom London has nicknamed 'Count Ward,' a title as invented as his social pedigree. Spy's line is not unkind, but the erect posture and slightly protruding jaw quietly signal overreach. Ward arrived in London in 1898 flush with American mining money; bankruptcy followed, making the portrait an inadvertent document of Gilded Age hubris transplanted to Mayfair.