Charles Dana Gibson's elegant drawings
captured the spirit of an age.

The country rewarded this artist and social commentator (he preferred to see himself as the later) with the greatest adulation ever seen up to that time for an illustrator.

Not only did he become a social lion and New York's most eligible bachelor (until he settled down with Virginia society belle Irene Langhorne in 1895), but he saw the nation decree "Gibson-mania" for the next two decades.

There was merchandising of the Gibson Girl on the level of Mickey Mouse or Star Wars. Large size books ("table albums," they were called), china plates and saucers, ashtrays, tablecloths, pillow covers, chair covers, souvenir spoons, screens, fans, umbrella stands...all bore the image of Gibson's creations. There was even a wallpaper for bachelor apartments, with the lovely Gibson faces in endless array.

A popular turn-of-the-century hobby, pyrography, saw people burning the Gibson Girl into leather and wood; and the image was traced and stitched into handkerchiefs. There were plays, songs, and even a movie based on his creation.

Amid this adulation, the well-bred young ladies of the time came (with their chaperones) to Gibson's studio to pose; later, many of them claimed to have been the "original" Gibson Girl.

And to keep his heroine company, the artist developed the Gibson Man, (for whom he himself could have passed), handsome, courteous, romantic, and almost at all times subtly in awe of the gorgeous Gibson Girl; for what comes across most clearly in the drawings is that Gibson felt women were clearly the superior sex...at least in terms of points per game!

Yet the important thing is that Gibson was able to show this in a way that never offended men; if anything, his male audience must have nodded in comradely, if rueful, agreement

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