Robert Wigram Crawford, 'A Man of Weight and High Standing'

Plate No. 219 in the Statesmen series, this chromolithograph by Melchiorre Delfico caricatures Robert Wigram Crawford (1813–1889), Liberal MP for the City of London from 1857 to 1874. The caption's pun is literal: Crawford was a portly man, and Delfico exploits that cheerfully, ballooning the torso beneath a double-breasted frock coat while keeping the legs trim and the white-haired head oversized in the house style. One hand tucks into the coat front in a faintly Napoleonic pose — appropriate for a mercantile grandee whose family fortune rested on East India shipping. The caricature plays Crawford's civic gravitas against his considerable girth with the affectionate mockery Vanity Fair typically reserved for Establishment worthies.