No other American illustrator has had such a profound and direct influence on the American people as Charles Dana Gibson. His creation, the "Gibson Girl," dictated the style, life, and dress of American men and women for nearly two decades. He was the first American illustrator to earn a fortune by his work and is ranked as an excellent pen-and-ink artist.

Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1867, Charles Dana Gibson was the second of three sons and second of the six children of Charles DeWolf Gibson and Josephine Elizabeth Lovett Gibson. When Gibson was still a small child, the family moved to Flushing, Long Island, where his father, a salesman for the National Car Spring Company, had been transferred. The Flushing neighborhood, as yet undeveloped, was ideal for a growing boy. Woodlands beckoned from the back door of his house; Gibson, his brother Langdon, and Dan Beard, the future...