Your Portrait Drawn by C D Gibson For a Dollar!

The Good Old Days, When a Buck Could Buy...

a Portrait of Yourself by a Legendary Illustrator

by Rick Marschall

"War... What's It Good For?" is a song from the Vietnam era, and its answer is in small part, and somewhat cynically, "Charity Events." Here is a ticket from a 1943 event at the Grand Central Galleries in New York (Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, in the Hotel Gotham). The War was raging around the world, and a charity event was scheduled for the American Red Cross... whose cause is always worthwhile, through wars and rumors of wars.

The Galleries mounted an exhibition featuring the work of more than two dozen noted artists, illustrators, and sculptors. What a day that must have been! The exhibition... the chance to meet the artists... and the chance to have your portrait executed by one of the artists -- for the admission price: One dollar.

There were beginners, to be sure, but legends were there too: Howard Chandler Christy; Jo Davidson; and Charles Dana Gibson. This was a year before the death of the creator of the Gibson Girl, but he was still drawing and painting in semi-retirement at his home in Maine. For years his home was in Manhattan -- figuratively and literally. He chronicled the doings of High Society in the Victorian and Edwardian eras; and he lived on the top floor of the Life Building off Madison Square. He had purchased the magazine that made him famous after its founders died. (In recent years it was the Madison Square Hotel and was my pied a terre in New York City. The owner Abe Puchal furnished it in tribute to the legendary cartoon magazine, with framed Life covers and Gibson art in every room and stairwell.) 

Where are the portraits and sketches done that day, one wonders...

In the meantime, I've got Gibson on my mind. He is one of my favorite cartoonists, and I have so many of his books, illustrated novels, magazine covers and postcards, and ephemera as to have compiled a virtual catalogue raisonné of Gibson. Our dining room has been named The Gibson Room, with framed originals and signed prints on all walls.

At the moment I am happiest with my most recent acquisition -- a large drawing he did in Munich on a tour of the continent, Under the Lindens. Two Gibson Girls, an arresting genre scene, great personalities of his subjects. 

  

              

Gibson twice travelled to Europe to study painting, but could not forsake the pen-and-ink that established his fame. This original has touches of watercolor shading, indicating the time in his career when he experimented.

Here is an old photograph of Gibson and his wife, the former Irene Langhorne -- a Virginia belle whose sister was Lady Nancy Astor (the first woman to sit in the British Parliament) and among whose charity work was founding Big Sisters.

Charles Dana and Irene Langhorne Gibson