Probably you have, everybody knows what the “Gibson girl” looks like….or maybe not, any more. Even if they know her image they may not know her creator. She’s now like Betty Boop, or Olive Oyl, recognizable as something you’ve seen before.
Today in the attic of what had been my grandparents’ apartment I found an old very decrepit copy of Gibson’s Pictures of People.
You can find this work on Gutenberg, if you want to follow me. ( There’s a YouTube video but it is BO-RING, don’t bother).
C. D. Gibson was an American artist, (medium:, pen and ink) whose life spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. My grandparents, or at least my grandmother, herself an artist, were huge fans. I think, recalling some of the hairdos she sports in photographs of her youth , she fancied herself a Gibson girl.
This falling-apart volume has a newspaper clipping of Gibson’s death notice, December 1944, in its last pages. In the front of the book someone (Grandma, was that you?) had noted that The Last Day Of Summer and The Last Guest were to be found in the penultimate pages of the volume.
I looked t all the drawings but those two made me cry. As they will you, maybe, if you look ‘em up on Gutenberg.
And y’want prophecy? Check out The Coming Game, showing bloomered women playing football with men!
What is so incredible is how with a few strokes of a pen he managed to convey facial expressions unambiguously showing astonishment, melancholy, longing, disdain.
He’s the American Daumier! Except Daumier’s drawings are mostly pretty ugly, spiky. Gibson’s are melodious, charming.
I hope maybe some people who’ve never seen him before may come to know him. RIP CDG—and thank you!
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
@aq3t, i see your Like. Like you, Gibson was a cartoonist. Nowadays, cartoons can ONLY be funny or satirical (and you are an adept!) He made drawings which could make people weep as well. But it’s an honor to me that you Liked this post.
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