ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

'Wokingham' — Sir George Russell, M.P.

Leslie Ward · Leslie Ward ('Spy'), published 2 March 1889

'Wokingham' — Sir George Russell, M.P.
Spy renders Sir George Russell—Conservative MP for Wokingham—in strict profile, a pose that amplifies the caricaturist's license with his large, downward-curving nose and protruding lower jaw. He wears the Victorian gentleman's uniform: black frock coat with silk-faced lapels, buff trousers, and a tall silk hat perched over a cloud of white side-whiskers. Hands pocketed, he projects the cultivated idleness of a county magnate rather than a parliamentary fighter. The caption simply reads *'Wokingham'*, Vanity Fair's habitual practice of naming the constituency rather than the man—a wry suggestion that such members were more seat than statesman. No overt political satire sharpens the image; Ward's needle here is social, skewering the well-fed English squire who drifted into Westminster on property and tradition.

Leslie Ward CC0