GIBSON GIRL CREATOR MIRRORED AN EPOCH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 40, 16 January 1945, Page 7

GIBSON GIRL CREATOR MIRRORED AN EPOCH

Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson Girl has died in America at the age of 11 } secure in the fame lie won "when love was young and ail the. world seemed gay." Other artists have painted portraits of their wives } their children and their grand-children, and of old men whose faces are filled with character. Others have been stirred by the beauty of old bridges and houses and shimmering waters.. But few have ever depicted, as Gibson did, a period with more unerring surety. During his long productive life he painted and drew the changes he saw about him and his name became known all over the world. He sketched bossing wives, and henpecked husbands lonely widows and widows not so lonely; nostalgic old men and women and laughing | youngsters; unctuous, bishops and fortune hunting noblemen, and housemaids; men and women who lived miserably in mansions and men and women who lived happily in hovels. But over all ruled that 3 svelt and dashing the Gibson girl, who first arrived on the scene about 1890'. The Gibson girl gave her name to women's fashions; she transformed their figures, their liairdressing and their pleasures. She was pictured on plates and trays, burned into soft pillows and reproduced on postcards. She appeared on the stage and in the films. She was glorified in song. "And yet " said her creator, many years after the furere had died down "the Gibson girl was. not so different as many believe from the girl of today. It is only the superficialities that vary. The girl who saijd good-bye to the boy going to Cuba to avenge the Maine had the same feelings as the girl who waved farewell to the chap leaving to make

he world safe for democracy. And

the girl of today has the feelings of both on seeing tlie boys leave to avenge Pearl Harbour. What difference dbes it make'if one was sakl to have allure another and another "oomph?" A change in vocabulary that's, all. •)

Gibson's personal story was not that of an artist, starving in a garret. Success came, to him early, and at 27 he was already famous as an illustrator, i't was then that he married Irene, one of the beautiful Langhorne sisters, another of whom is Lady Astor. For years- after his marriage Mrs Gibson was the Gibson girl of his drawings.