Lighter than Air

A Gibson Girl in white evening dress sits in a parlor armchair, composed and self-possessed, while a man in formal black tailcoat literally floats off the floor at right—feet dangling, hand raised to his brow in dazed rapture. The joke is mechanical and gendered: she is gravity; he is weightless with infatuation. Behind them hangs a large salon painting of a woman in court dress, doubling the female subject as art object and social force. Candelabra, a settee with embroidered cushions, and framed portraits establish the upper-class interior Gibson used as his habitual stage. The caption, Lighter than Air, names the man's condition without irony—he has been socially unmanned by beauty, and the woman appears entirely unsurprised.