Charles Dana Gibson Is One of the Illustrators in This Month's Scribners

This promotional poster, drawn by William Sergeant Kendall, advertises Scribner's magazine by trading on the celebrity of its contributor Charles Dana Gibson. The composition is straightforward portraiture-as-advertisement: a confident, broad-shouldered man in formal evening coat stands before a plain chair, hands tucked at his hips, a boutonnière at his lapel. The lettered text to his right reads, matter-of-factly, that Gibson 'is one of the illustrators in this month's Scribners.' No satirical caption, no social scene — the drawing is the argument. By 1896 Gibson's name alone was sufficient commercial currency to sell a magazine. Kendall renders him in clean pen line, projecting prosperous masculine ease — the very social type Gibson himself would spend a career illustrating.