Charles Dana Gibson Is One of the Illustrators in This Month's Scribners

This promotional poster, drawn by William Sergeant Kendall, advertises *Scribner's* magazine by trading on the celebrity of its contributor Charles Dana Gibson. The composition is straightforward portraiture-as-advertisement: a confident, broad-shouldered man in formal evening coat stands before a plain chair, hands tucked at his hips, a boutonnière at his lapel. The lettered text to his right reads, matter-of-factly, that Gibson 'is one of the illustrators in this month's *Scribners*.' No satirical caption, no social scene — the drawing *is* the argument. By 1896 Gibson's name alone was sufficient commercial currency to sell a magazine. Kendall renders him in clean pen line, projecting prosperous masculine ease — the very social type Gibson himself would spend a career illustrating.