Scribner's: Charles Dana Gibson

William Sergeant Kendall's poster places the illustrator Charles Dana Gibson against a flat cadmium-yellow ground, leaning casually against a plain wooden chair, hands pocketed, dressed in a black cutaway coat and grey trousers. The text to his right announces that Gibson "is one of the illustrators in this month's Scribners." The composition is spare and confident—a celebrity portrait in the mode of the 1890s art-poster craze inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec and the Beggarstaff Brothers. No ethnic caricature appears. The image is commercial promotion, not editorial satire: Scribner's Magazine advertising its own talent to cultivate prestige readers who recognized Gibson's name as a social arbiter. Kendall's monogram appears in a small circle below the publisher's name.