George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon — Statesman No. 12

Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') renders Lord Clarendon as a stooped, full-length figure in a long dark frock coat, hands pocketed, head bowed with an air of weary self-satisfaction. The white mutton-chop whiskers and bald crown are gently exaggerated — the standard Pellegrini vocabulary of polite mockery rather than savage distortion. The caption, characteristically backhanded, reads: 'To say that he is the best foreign minister in the country is not much as foreign ministers go; but as times go it is a great deal.' The joke is double-edged: it flatters Clarendon while damning British diplomacy wholesale. He was serving his fourth and final term as Foreign Secretary under Gladstone, navigating the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian crisis.