Charles Dana Gibson (Portrait Photograph)

This is not a cartoon plate but a formal photographic portrait of Charles Dana Gibson (1867–1944), the illustrator whose pen-and-ink creations defined Life magazine's visual identity for three decades. Identified by the studio caption Gibson, Chas Dana printed vertically at right, the image shows a broad-shouldered, balding man in a three-piece suit seated in a Windsor chair, legs crossed, expression composed and authoritative — the bearing of an artist who had already made the Gibson Girl a cultural phenomenon. No political argument is present; this is a professional likeness, likely made near the period when Gibson purchased Life itself (1920). The photograph documents the man behind the magazine rather than any single plate within it.