Some of our most interesting prints were once given away in a magazine. Today they comprise an important social history resource for the nineteenth century, illustrating spectacles and other visual devices in use by some of the most significant people of the day.
Vanity Fair was a Victorian magazine, founded in 1868 and aimed at the middle and upper sections of society. From the very beginning its illustrations included a distinctive satirical portraiture of a type which was new to English journalism. These portraits were designed to be collectible and many households or clubs enjoyed gathering their own gallery of the most distinguished politicians, clergymen and lawyers of the day. The artists became well-known by their pseudonyms such as 'Spy' and indeed their works are often known by the shorthand label 'Spy cartoons'. The caricatures were reproduced by the relatively new colour printing process of chromolithography.
Many of the Vanity Fair portraits include spectacles, monocles or pince-nez, often with a neck cord attached. In some cases the depiction is indistinct; the artist, usually working in watercolour, was interested only in providing an impression of the device. In other portraits however, the optical device is very clearly shown or else exaggerated such that it becomes a defining motif for the person concerned. An example would be the huge monocle filling the socket of Mr Maguire, the campaigner for Irish Home Rule.
The portraits are a useful source for studying the spectacle fashions of the second half of the nineteenth century and the Edwardian period. The manner in which a frame is worn, held or suspended is often clearly shown. This may be from a cord, or a coat button. The spectacles may be flourished in the hand or parked out of the way on the forehead. In one instance, the son of the novelist Charles Dickens is illustrated actually cleaning his spectacle lenses with a cloth.
Educated Victorian readers held contemporary scientists in a level of esteem that would be unfamiliar today. In consequence, certain distinguished names in the fields of optics and ophthalmology are to be found amongst the Vanity Fair portraits. This includes Mr Frank Crisp, the well-known collector of microscopes, Sir George Airy, reputedly the first to use a cylindrical lens for his own correction, Sir William Crookes the Chemist (a former Superintendent of the Radcliffe Observatory) and R Brudenell Carter who found fame through his operations on corneal staphyloma.
There are so many relevant Vanity Fair portraits (the BOA Museum has 68 for example) that a comprehensive listing would seem superfluous. Below is attached a list of some of the best that an enthusiast might consider including in his collection. It should be noted that many of these prints are available quite cheaply as modern reproductions.
Wearing Pince-Nez or Nose spectacles
Wearing a monocle
Other optical devices
The MusEYEum Guide to the pseudonyms of Vanity Fair cartoonists:
|Ao||= L’Estrange. Floruit 1903-7.|
|APE||= Carlo Pellegrini (1839-1889). Born Capua. Came to England 1864. Adopted name ‘APE’ from 1869.|
|F.C.G.||= Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844-1925).|
|F.T.D.||= F.T. Dalton. Floruit 1890.|
|GUTH||= Jean Baptiste Guth. Floruit 1883-1921.|
|Hay||= Floruit 1888-1893.|
|Lib||= Liberio Prosperi. Floruit 1886-1903.|
|PAL||= Jean de Paleogu. Born 1855.|
|SPY||= Sir Leslie Ward (1851-1922). Adopted name ‘SPY’ from 1873, working 36 years for Vanity Fair. Knighted 1918.|
|STUFF||= Possibly H.C. Sepping Wright (i.e. his name becomes the ‘wright stuff’). Floruit 1894-1900.|
|T||= Theobald Chartran (1849-1907).|
|w.a.g.||= A.G. Witherby. Floruit 1894-1901.|