Robert Lowe, 'Statesmen No. 4'

Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') depicts Robert Lowe — Chancellor of the Exchequer under Gladstone and fierce opponent of the 1867 Reform Act — in profile, stout and self-satisfied, wearing a silk top hat and dark frock coat, an umbrella tucked under one arm. The caricature exaggerates his broad, ruddy face and heavy jowl, hallmarks of Pellegrini's style rather than ethnic caricature. The caption skewers Lowe's central contradiction: a professed Liberal who fought mass enfranchisement tooth and nail, calling working-class voters unfit for the ballot. Pellegrini frames this as paradox with genuine ambition behind it, suggesting the tension between democratic principle and aristocratic instinct might yet propel Lowe to Downing Street — a prediction that proved wrong.