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From the exhibition

'A Conservative' — The Earl of Feversham

Carlo Pellegrini · Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape'), published 30 March 1878

'A Conservative' — The Earl of Feversham
Pellegrini renders William Duncombe, 2nd Earl of Feversham, as a square-shouldered Yorkshire grandee in a double-breasted frock coat, hands planted at his sides, chin lifted with patrician assurance. The caption reads simply *'a Conservative'* — a label that doubles as satire: Feversham held no great office and left no dramatic parliamentary record, making the title his entire political identity. Pellegrini's caricature plays on that vacancy with cheerful economy, inflating the chest and whitening the mutton-chop whiskers to signal hereditary self-importance rather than earned distinction. The comedy is purely social, pricking the English landed class's habit of treating party allegiance as a birthright rather than a conviction.

Carlo Pellegrini CC0