Early 20th Century American Art – Charles Dana Gibson Book 1

I’d never heard of Charles Dana Gibson before seeing his work at a recent garage sale, but as soon as I saw these books, I knew I had to buy them.

Both large art volumes were printed in 1907 and feature incredible artwork from before the turn of the century. Each book is chock full of beautiful pen and ink illustrations accompanied by humorous captions. Gibson is primarily known for creating the “Gibson Girl”, a personification of the beauty of the time’s ideal American girl.

His drawings are striking and skillfully done, but it’s his captions that impress me. They’re often simple and short, but add a lot of humor to the mix.

After looking through book 1 today, I learned that a phenomenon that I thought was new, has been going on for over a hundred years. I’ve noticed an influx of people online saying, “That moment when. . .” to describe certain situations. Turns out, what I dismissed as a product of social networking has actually been around since the early 1900s.

That Delicious Moment

When You Find You Are To Take In To Dinner The Girl Who Yesterday Refused You

There are over a hundred drawings in ‘The Gibson Book I’, but I took pictures of some of my favorites. I’ll be posting on Book II once I go through it. Enjoy!