ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

John Cranch Walker Vivian, Statesmen No. 68

Carlo Pellegrini · 5 November 1870

John Cranch Walker Vivian, Statesmen No. 68
Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') renders the Cornish mining magnate and Liberal MP John Cranch Walker Vivian — brother of Baron Vivian — as a supremely self-satisfied man of the world. The figure wears a grey frock coat, checked trousers, and a glossy top hat; a red flower pins his lapel, a cane hangs from one hand, and a thin cigar trails smoke from the other. Pellegrini's characteristic exaggeration fixes on Vivian's bulbous nose and extravagant mutton-chop whiskers, pushing the face toward caricature without malice. The caption, *'Always pleasant, always genial,'* reads as gentle endorsement rather than satire — one of the magazine's warmer tributes to a backbench notable more liked than feared.

Carlo Pellegrini Public domain