Princess Zimbazim

A bust-length portrait in Gibson's characteristic reed-pen line: a young woman shown in three-quarter profile, her gaze angled slightly away from the viewer. She wears a wide-brimmed hat rendered in dense hatching, trimmed with a sweeping ostrich feather that arches toward the upper-left corner. Her hair curls softly at the cheek; her expression is composed, verging on the faintly amused detachment Gibson consistently assigned to his idealized American women. No caption appears within the plate itself; the title belongs to the serialized fiction it illustrated—Robert W. Chambers's The Princess Zimbazim in Hearst's Magazine. The image carries no ethnic caricature. Gibson's signature appears in ink at lower center. The figure exemplifies the Gibson Girl type at its most refined: self-possessed, fashionable, and coolly attractive.