Where would the Gibson Girl be without her Gibson Dad? Working long hours in endless condescension as a shopgirl or as a seamstress locked in a burning shirtwaist factory, or married and raising six kids on a iceman's salary, that's where. She'd be nowhere near a Gibson drawing, that's for sure.
In 1898 Gibson began a series of drawings that followed a henpecked husband and beleaguered father on an extended tour of Europe with his two beautiful daughters and his wife (who kinda looks like Fred Mertz in Gay Nineties drag.) These drawings would be collected the next year into a book. They might have been created with a book in mind, as Gibson's books had by this time proved to be a hugely popular and lucrative venture for the artist. What follows is a sadly incomplete look at the series The Education of Mr. Pipp by Charles Dana Gibson.
