ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Peter Mackie ('Restless Peter'), Vanity Fair Supplement

Spy ( Leslie Ward ) · 8 April 1908, chromolithograph by Leslie Ward ('Spy')

Peter Mackie ('Restless Peter'), Vanity Fair Supplement
Spy's full-length caricature of Peter Jeffrey Mackie — whisky magnate and creator of White Horse Scotch — renders him in full Highland dress: blue-and-red tartan kilt with a fur sporran, red jacket and waistcoat, Balmoral bonnet, red hose, and a shepherd's crook. The nickname *'Restless Peter'* pointed to Mackie's notoriously combative temperament; he feuded publicly with the Loch Fyne distillery and lobbied aggressively on whisky-trade policy. Spy exaggerates his florid complexion and jutting nose — conventions of Vanity Fair physiognomical caricature applied uniformly across its Anglo-Scottish subjects — while the Highland costume flatters his self-cultivated image as a Scottish land-owner and sportsman rather than a mere industrialist.

Spy ( Leslie Ward ) Public domain