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C. D. Gibson & Wife

Bain News Service, publisher · c. 1900, Bain News Service

C. D. Gibson & Wife
This press photograph, labeled in the negative "C. D. Gibson & Wife," shows illustrator Charles Dana Gibson and his wife Irene Langhorne posed together, likely dockside or aboard a vessel. Gibson, creator of the iconic *Gibson Girl* for *Life* magazine, wears a fedora and overcoat, hands clasped at his lapels; Irene, pearl-necklaced and corsaged, holds a small bag and wears a fashionable dark hat. The image is less cartoon than cultural document: Irene Langhorne was herself a celebrated beauty widely understood to be the living model for her husband's idealized American everywoman — the composed, athletic, gently aristocratic figure who appeared weekly in *Life* from the 1890s onward. No editorial caption survives here, but the couple's public presence was inseparable from that constructed image.

Bain News Service, publisher Public domain