Studio: international art (8.1896)

Charles Dana Gibson

spirit of Life burst on New York. But they will
always remain American, local, limited, understood
only by the man who has Tammany on the brain,
Mott Street on his nerves, and the Stars and Stripes
as his paradise. Yet, after all, the United States
are not bounded by the White House, nor encom-
passed by the Capitol; nor are the social strata
monopolised by the vulgar German Jew and the
impossible Iiishman whom the artists of Puck and
Judge have served up to the point of nausea. Is
there not a Four Hundred; is there not a brilliant
Boston ; is there not an aspiring untitled aristo-
cracy, none the less aspiring that its 'scutcheons are
of recent manufacture ? Just think of the vast
possibilities for the humorist as he views this
select circle in the midst of the triumphant demo-
cracy that Mr. Andrew Carnegie praises in theory
and punishes in practice. That, and the hundred
and one possibilities of humour in the non-political
arena, Life saw, and it bounded into instantaneous
popularity.

Had Life done nothing but broaden the draughts
man-humorist's horizon it would have rendered
American journalism signal service. But it did
more. It spread out a canvas to a lad of eighteen
called Charles Dana Gibson, and in doing so it
rendered a service, not only to American art, but
to the black-and-white Art of the civilised world.
The results of the last ten years—for Mr. Gibson
76

is only eight-and-twenty—have proved the wisdom
of his selection on the staff of Life. His work,
increasing in excellence with age and practice, has
gradually forced itself on the attention of all lovers
of black-and-white, and put him at the head of his
fellow-craftsmen. And now the ten years are up,
as Hilda Wangel used to say to the Master Builder,
and Mr. Gibson is with us in London, studying
our types, watching the faces in the Park or at the
Play. And his appearance amongst us is empha-
sised by the fact that Mr. John Lane has published,
as was noticed in a recent number of The Studio,
a magnificent album of Mr. Gibson's cartoons
—which, by the way, though few people may know
it, appear week by week in Snap Shots, a penny
weekly published by Mr. James Henderson, of
Red Lion House, to whose courtesy The Studio
is indebted for the reproduction of the cartoons
herewith presented.

Mr. Gibson has been called—for the Man in the
Street always demands a label, a pocket-book
description—the "American Du Maurier." And
there are some points in common between the
veteran of Punch and the young man of Life.
Both of them have created a type of superb,
almost unearthly, woman. Mr. Du Maurier's
goddesses, culminating, as art and literature, in
Trilby, are familiar to everybody. Mr. Gibson's
American girl has long had a shrine in every