in the public domain

for Deborah

Without admiring him, I was always grateful for Gibson's industry with ink. Any collection of exercises in hatching must surely include Charles Gibson. The empty spaces of "TheTroubles of the Rich",a de-populated aristocratic dinner, could not be so intense without the dark leaden spaces only solid hatching can achieve. His self-imposed exercise ("On the Ferry" above) of drawing within each lozenge in the ferry concertina gate has to be admired.

Reading Edith Wharton, Gibson provides me with a stock cast of characters, arched eyebrows over cool haughty feline expressions, able to kill a man with a single glance, and worse to any woman that put a dainty shoe over the line.

I should add he was capable of dull hack work, see the LIFE cartoons, which are as bad as anything Tenniel and Illingworth were capable of (some claim this).

I include my favourite piece of graphic misogyny, the Parlour Magician brandishing a Bunny Rabbit. "Keep your entertainment within the mental grasp of your guests." It makes me laugh every time.

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