The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1897-08-08
CHARLES DANA GIBSON.

The remarks of contemporary critic upon
! the work of an arIlst in whom all America is
interested are quoted below. All readers OF
books ana lovers of America and American
types follow Charles Dana Gibson's career
with interest:
"Word comes from London with seeming
authority that Allen, the publisher at Orplng-
ton, in Kent, whose name the average reader
knows only on the title pages of costly vol
umes by Ruskin, is meditating a new edition
OF Dickens, and that he has engaged Phil May,
the English carics turfst and Mr.. Gibson, the
American illustrator, to make pictures for it.
Mr. Gibson and his work are probably better
known in England now than they were two or
three years ago, when a solemn British essay
list wrote of him as Charles Gibson Dana; but
it is bit surprising that an English pub
lisher-even the fastdious and fnical Mr.
Allen-should have come over sea to find an
illus traitor, and for Dickens novels. Most
surprising of all, perhaps. is his choice of Mr..
Gibson for the task.
Presumably the first duty of the illustrator
OF tale is to portray its personages as It's
author has conceived them and its incidents
as he has set them forth. Or course. if the
illustrator is worth his salt his own tempera-
ment and methods will appear in his work
but he is in duty bound to keep them sub
ordinate as he can to the authors. Now, If
ever an illustrator ran persistently to types of
his own, he is Mr.. Gibson and the long sue
cessiOn-one dare not say of how many years
of his drawings in Life has made them very
familiar. They have even added to the Ian
guage the phrase, The Gibson girP-a nota-
bic unfairness to the Gibson youth, the in
creasing length of whose marvellous legs, as
though to keep pace with her height, deserves
like distinction. His young men and maidens
are very comely, wholesome, often charming
and often well drawn; but they have long been
variations on one two themes that have
taken form and sui stance as much out OF his
own Imagination and habit as out of life.
His overfed fathers and acid dowagers come
much nearer thereto. Moreover, even when
Mr.. Gibson went to Paris and to London and
drew the men and the women that he saw
about him there, 1t was easy to see his own
types struggling, perhaps unconsciously, be-
meath, and now that he is back again at regu-
lar work at home, he has returned to them.
though with surer and finer hand, heart and
soul
"Hereto when he has made pictures for
novel or tale, the physical traits of its per-
sonages, even in the text, have closely fol-
lowed the Gibson formula so that the suthor-
usually Mr. Davis-and the illustrator met
more than half way. 1t is hard, however, to
recall single character in all Dickens novels
that suggests quickly and persuasively the
Gibsonian youth or maid. Steerforth in David
Copperfield,' perhaps comes closest to the
former; but his herOines are too thoroughly
feminine in body and in mind to approach the
latter. Fancy Gibsonian Dora or Gibsonian
Agnes Summerson. With his elderly men Mr..
Gibson viii have fairer prospect of success.
To approach Dickens personRges anew, as if
a manuscript and not the hundredth reprint
lay before him, is no mean opportunity for
any illustrator, and Mr. Gibson is not unde-
serving Tit. In his case, besides, the remote
mesa of some of his types from the new ma
terial and the inevitable struggle between the
two promise to make the experiment unusu-
ally interesting"