Charles Dana Gibson, *The Reason Dinner Was Late*, 1912

A portly, mustachioed paterfamilias sits squarely before the dinner table, arms crossed, visibly impatient. Across from him, a young woman—rendered with Gibson's characteristic elegance—sketches his portrait on a drawing board, entirely absorbed. Two other women cluster behind her, peering with amused complicity; an older woman in an apron, likely the cook, scowls from the doorway. The caption anchors the joke: artistic obsession has held up the household meal. Gibson frames the scene as a gentle domestic comedy pitting bourgeois male appetite against female creative absorption. The work appeared in *Life* magazine during Gibson's career.