From the exhibition
Sir Peter Carlaw Walker, Bart. — 'Peter'
Leslie Ward · Vanity Fair, 8 June 1905. Chromolithograph by Leslie Ward ('Spy').

Spy's plate presents Walker as a prosperous Edwardian sportsman-gentleman: tweed knickerbockers suit in warm ochre check, white spatterdashes buttoned to the knee, black Oxfords, and a bowler hat cocked forward. He holds a smoking cigarette in one hand and a malacca cane in the other, tucking a red-covered volume under his arm — the pose of a man at a race meeting rather than a counting house. The caption reads simply 'Peter', the familiar address signalling insider clubability. Walker, Scottish brewer and baronet, embodied the Liberal Unionist money that purchased landed respectability in late-Victorian Britain. No ethnic caricature operates here; the comedy is purely social — new industrial wealth dressed, perhaps a shade too carefully, in the costume of the old sporting squirearchy.
Leslie Ward Public domain