Art: Welfenschatz

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Academicians need not have been surprised at a controversial picture from Charles Dana Gibson. Now bald and 63, he was the Peter Arno of the 1890's. From his nervous, scratchy pen sprang that sensational figure, the Gibson Girl, a majestic creature with an imposing pompadour, large bust and perfect Grecian profile. Women 35 years ago who did not look like Gibson Girls attempted to do so, just as their mothers had imitated the swanlike ladies of Punch's Illustrator John Leech, as their daughters ape the rowdy sirens of Peter Arno.

A far gentler satirist than Leech or Arno, Artist Gibson seldom made fun of the Gibson Girl herself. Occasionally in the drawings which made Life the most popular humorous weekly in the country and brought Artist Gibson enough money to buy the magazine from its former owners, the Gibson Girl would exhibit fear of mice, embarrassment at the shortness of her bathing skirt, or a tendency to buy extravagant dresses. But for the most part the Gibson Girl remained the goddess of a sentimental generation, admirable always. It was through the strange minor characters that surrounded her that Artist Gibson was "exceedingly facetious." The Gibson Girl had a formidable mother who was forever trying to marry her to titled foreigners with beards and ribbons across their shirtfronts (the marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough was a sensation of the decade). She had a wizened little father by the name of Mr. Pipp, who became Artist Gibson's most successful character. She had a number of suitors who were either too fat or too thin, wore reefers with enormous pearl buttons, and killed chin-bearded farmers' chickens by driving their Stevens-Duryeas recklessly on country roads.

The four guzzlers in "Speaking of Prohibition" were exactly in this mood of gentle satire. Actually, Prohibition is a subject on which Artist Gibson feels most strongly (witness Life's altruistic crusade last spring). But these four quaffers were not drunk, just pleasantly "fried." Their faces could be found in any Gibson album of 30 years ago. Observers found a curious old-fashioned touch in the fact that one of them, looking like a younger Mr. Pipp, was apparently imbibing hot scotch with lemon, a British beverage almost unknown to the Prohibition generation.

*Just to make Guelph-Ghibelline history more complicated, though the Guelphs were defenders of the Papacy, Ghibellines of the Empire, Guelph Otto IV was elected Holy Roman Emperor.

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