Studies in Expression: At a Fashionable Funeral

Gibson crowds a funeral parlor with the social types he knew cold: overdressed women in elaborate hats lean toward one another with unconcealed curiosity, men in frock coats crane their necks, and one figure at far right appears to be stifling laughter rather than grief. The composition reads left to right as a spectrum of performed mourning—from studied solemnity to barely suppressed gossip. No caption survives in this reproduction, but the title Studies in Expression does the editorial work: Gibson is auditing hypocrisy, cataloguing the gap between social obligation and actual feeling. The drawing shows none of the period's cruder ethnic caricature; Gibson's targets here are class manners, specifically the Gilded Age leisure set treating a funeral as another occasion for display.