ABSTRACT
Artist Charles Dana Gibson's conceptualization of the ideal American woman first appeared in Life, a weekly humor magazine, in 1890. A 'torrent of print' was devoted to the question of the identity of Gibson's original model. In actuality, the first Gibson Girl was an ideal composite rather than an individual portrait. Love, courtship, and marriage comprised Gibson's major themes. The Gibson Girl was 'braver, stronger, healthier, more skillful, more human', than her voluptuous predecessor. Feminists of the time often viewed her as a 'prototype of the 'new woman". Still, Charles Dana Gibson did not sympathize with 'organized feminism'. Gibson disliked the heavy, voluptuous woman who had reigned as the American ideal since the 1870s. Instead, he was attracted to the classical types favored by his idol, the Paris-born black-and-white artist George Du Maurier. In 1912, the Gibson Girl triumphantly symbolized the ideal American woman.
