Russell Gurney, 'A Commissioner'

James Tissot's chromolithograph presents Russell Gurney (1804–1878), Recorder of London and Conservative MP for Southampton, seated on a bench with hands loosely clasped, wearing a dark double-breasted frock coat and light trousers. His white, leonine hair and ruddy, broad face are gently exaggerated in the Vanity Fair manner — imposing rather than cruel. The caption, 'A Commissioner,' alludes to his then-current role heading the joint Anglo-American commission investigating Alabama Claims arising from the Civil War, a diplomatically sensitive assignment that had made him briefly famous on both sides of the Atlantic. Tissot renders him as placid and self-possessed — the unflappable lawyer-diplomat — rather than as a politician with an axe to grind.