Viscount Dangan

Spy (Leslie Ward) presents Henry Arthur Mornington Wellesley, Viscount Dangan — later 3rd Earl Cowley and great-great-nephew of the Duke of Wellington — in the guise of a country sportsman rather than a statesman. The figure strides in profile, wearing a loose tan Norfolk-style jacket, blue checked knickerbockers, cream gaiters, and a brown bowler; a riding crop is tucked behind his back. The caricature's comedy lies in proportion: a bulbous, cheerfully ruddy face sits atop a slight, almost boneless body, the red hair and upturned nose exaggerating the subject's youth and patrician ease. No cutting political argument is advanced; at twenty-six, Dangan had little parliamentary record to satirise. The plate belongs to Vanity Fair's gentler mode — social portraiture of an heir whose chief distinction was his famous surname.