Patience

A lone woman sits at a café table, gloved hands folded over what appears to be a menu or note, a wine glass at her elbow. She wears a dramatically wide-brimmed hat massed with ostrich plumes—the signature extravagance of Edwardian millinery—and a high-collared, elaborately detailed dress that pools at her feet. Her expression is composed, slightly downcast: she is waiting, presumably for a companion who has not arrived. Gibson's title Patience frames that wait as ironic endurance rather than contentment. The drawing exemplifies Gibson's fluent hatching and his recurring subject: the socially poised American woman navigating public space, desire, and decorum simultaneously.