Charles Dana Gibson

Charles Dana Gibson (September 14, 1867 – December 23, 1944) He had five siblings.

His great-great-great-grandfather was the lawyer Richard Dana (1700–1772). The line continued through his daughter, Lydia Trowbridge Dana (1755–1808); her daughter, Frances Maria Hastings (1792–1872); and her son, Charles Dana Gibson (1816–1867), who was his paternal grandfather and namesake.

He was also a descendant of U.S. Senators James DeWolf and William Bradford.

A talented youth with an early interest in art, Gibson was enrolled by his parents in New York City's Art Students League, where he studied for two years.

Contrary to popular legend, Gibson’s wife and her elegant Langhorne sisters did not inspire his famous Gibson Girls. The first Gibson Girl appeared in 1890, more than two years before Gibson met the Langhorne family. In later years, however, many of his friends and relatives modeled for his illustrations.

After the death of John Ames Mitchell in 1918, Gibson became editor of Life and later took over as owner of the magazine. As the popularity of the Gibson Girl faded after World War I, Gibson took to working in oils for his own pleasure. In 1918, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1932.

He retired in 1936, the same year Scribner's published his biography, Portrait of an Era as Drawn by C. D. Gibson: A Biography by Fairfax Downey. At the time of his death in 1944, he was considered "the most celebrated pen-and-ink artist of his time as well as a painter applauded by the critics of his later work."

Personal life

On November 7, 1895, Gibson was married to Irene Langhorne (1873–1956), a daughter of railroad industrialist Chiswell Langhorne. Irene was born in Danville, Virginia, and was one of five sisters, all noted for their beauty, including Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, the first woman to serve as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. Irene and Charles were the parents of two children: who married George Browne Post III (1890–1952), a grandson of architect George B. Post, in 1916. They divorced and she married real estate developer John Josiah Emery (1898–1976) in 1926. Langhorne Gibson (1899–1982), who married Marion Taylor (1902–1960), a daughter of Moses Taylor V and granddaughter of Heber R. Bishop in 1922. He later married Parthenia Burke Ross (1911–1998) in 1936.

For part of his career, Gibson lived in New Rochelle, New York, a art colony, among actors, writers and artists of the period. Gibson also owned an island off Islesboro, Maine which came to be known as 700 Acre Island; he and his wife spent an increasing amount of time there through the years.

Gibson died of a heart ailment in 1944, aged 77, at 127 East 73rd Street, his home in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. After a private funeral service at the Gibson home in New York, he was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Work