Watch List notes:

Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Rabbi Hermann Adler (HaKohen), in print of Vanity Fair magazine chromolithograph caricature entitled "The Chief Rabbi" & dated March 31st 1904, by 'Spy' (Sir Leslie Matthew Ward); here a "characteristic portrait" by Ward, being less of a caricature and more of an actual portrait of the subject, using realistic body proportions (though often referred to as a "Spy cartoon"); full print size: 26.55 x 39.3 cm; small piece missing top left edge. 'Vanity Fair' aimed to expose the contemporary vanities of Victorian society and did so through these popular cartoon images. Adler succeeded his father (R. Nathan Marcus Adler) in the position of Chief Rabbi and was praised in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica as having "raised the position to one of much dignity and importance" - probably captured 7 years earlier in this portrait. It was said of him that once when he was having a lunch with the British Catholic cardinal, Herbert Vaughan, the cardinal asked the Rabbi, "Now, Dr. Adler, when may I have the pleasure of helping you to some ham?" and the Rabbi responded: "At Your Eminence's wedding" (Cardinals are celibate).