Charles Dana Gibson

This formal photographic portrait—not a cartoon plate—shows Charles Dana Gibson seated in a wooden chair, arms relaxed, wearing a dark three-piece suit with a cravat. He meets the camera with composed authority. A studio backdrop of draped fabric fills the frame. The sitter's name appears in block capitals along the right margin: GIBSON, CHAS DANA. Gibson was Life magazine's most celebrated illustrator, whose pen-and-ink 'Gibson Girl' defined an era's idealized American womanhood and made him arguably the highest-paid magazine artist of his generation. The portrait conveys exactly the prosperous, self-assured gentleman his drawings celebrated—a man who had, in effect, drawn his own social world into existence.