The “Gibson Girl”

Charles Dana Gibson was born September 14th, 1867 in Roxbury, MA. The art style he invented epitomized the image we know as the Gibson Girl. His drawings depicted the vital and interesting new woman of the turn of the century. She was fun loving, carefree and intelligent and you could see this very plainly in Gibson’s art.

The marketing of the Gibson Girl image lasted for twenty years. It was found on plates, calendars, ashtrays, pillow cases, tablecloths, fans, souvenirs and even wall paper. Even in today’s society, her image is very collectible. You can find her in coffee table books and paper dolls at Amazon.com

By the 1890′s, Gibson was working for all the major publications in New York: The Century, Harper’s Monthly, Weekly and Bazaar and he was still doing his weekly drawings for Life.
After WW I ended and with the death of his dear friend and mentor, John Mitchell, Gibson replaced him as editor of Life Magazine. The world was changing and the Gibson Girl was about to be replaced by the image of the Flapper. However, this gave Gibson the time to pursue his interest in oil painting. Gibson died in 1944, but not before he’d seen his image of the Gibson girl portrayed in many Hollywood movies.

The US Postal Service chose a Gibson Girl image 

for a stamp to showcase the early nineteen hundreds.