Charles Dana Gibson, Artist and Illustrator, c. 1917–1918

This formal photographic portrait — not a cartoon plate — shows Charles Dana Gibson in three-quarter profile, seated, hands clasped, wearing a dark suit and bow tie. It was made during his tenure as Chairman of the Division of Pictorial Publicity under the Committee on Public Information, the federal propaganda apparatus organized to marshal American artists behind the First World War effort. Gibson, already celebrated as Life magazine's defining illustrator and creator of the patrician 'Gibson Girl,' here appears in his institutional rather than satirical role. The image carries no caption, no caricature, no comic argument — it is a straight bureaucratic record photograph documenting the man who had turned pen-and-ink social comedy into a vehicle of wartime national mobilization.