ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

$ $ $ $ $

Gibson, Charles Dana, 1867-1944, artist · Charles Dana Gibson, 1903

$ $ $ $ $
A ballroom or reception hall, rendered in Gibson's precise pen-and-ink line, splits into two distinct social worlds. At left, a seated older woman—jeweled, elaborately coiffed—holds court as four men in formal evening dress crowd around her with attentive, slightly fawning postures. The cluster radiates money and status. At right, a young woman in a low-cut ball gown sits alone on one of a row of empty gilt chairs, her gaze cast downward in quiet isolation. No caption is visible in this reproduction. The title—five repeated dollar signs—makes the argument explicit: wealth commands all masculine attention. The young woman's beauty counts for nothing against the older woman's fortune. Gibson indicts the marriage market with characteristic economy, no caricature required; the cruelty is purely sociological.

Gibson, Charles Dana, 1867-1944, artist Public domain