E.C. Worthington

Carlo de Fornaro's caricature of E.C. Worthington pairs a thin, sharp-featured man in a flat cap and polka-dotted jacket with a heraldic coat of arms featuring a rooster and wheat sheaf. The sketch exemplifies late-19th-century newspaper comic art, where visual exaggeration and symbolic imagery combined to mock public figures. The rooster, wheat symbol, and the subject's gaunt profile suggest a satirical commentary on Worthington's commercial or agricultural interests. Rendered in de Fornaro's economical line style with selective color highlighting, the work demonstrates how illustrators deployed visual exaggeration and symbolic imagery to construct humor. Such pieces appeared regularly in newspapers and magazines, establishing visual codes that would structure the emerging comic strip form.