Worshippers

A fashionably dressed woman kneels at a church prie-dieu, her elaborately trained skirt pooling across the floor, an open book—presumably a missal—propped on the lectern before her. A halo floats above her feathered hat, and a top hat rests on the floor nearby, presumably belonging to an absent male admirer. Gibson's joke is double-edged: the halo ironizes the woman's apparent piety, suggesting her true congregation is male worship rather than divine. The composition belongs to Gibson's sustained campaign of affectionate but pointed commentary on fashionable society's vanities, where the church is less a place of devotion than a theater of display. No ethnic caricature is present. The fluid pen-and-ink hatching is characteristic of Gibson's mature Life work.