Cox's portrait shows Gibson in his early fifties, several decades after his "Gibson Girl" illustrations made him wealthy and famous. Gibson lived in Flushing, New York, from the age of eight. At thirteen, he apprenticed briefly to Augustus Saint-Gaudens, but gave up the position to finish high school and work on Wall Street. He studied at the Art Students League for the year 1883-84, and then began to do illustration work, his first drawing being accepted by Life in 1886. He made his first trip to Europe in 1888, studying for two months at the Académie Julian, in Paris. It was immediately following this period abroad that Gibson attained success as an illustrator. In 1895, he married Irene Langhorne, said to be the inspiration for the Gibson Girl type, a society girl whom he drew repeatedly in illustrations which stressed her beauty, stylishness, and independent ways.
Gibson commanded great sums for his drawings in Life and Collier's Weekly. In 1905, however, he sacrificed his income to take up oil painting and again become a student in Paris. His oil paintings were never well known, and in later years, they became a private distraction. Gibson bought Life magazine in 1918 and became its publisher. Reported to have been a poor manager, he sold it in 1932, shortly before the magazine went bankrupt. From 1923 to 1930 he was a regular lecturer on illustration in the Academy school. Much of his time after the sale of Life was spent at his summer home at Seven Hundred Acre Island, Maine. He continued painting and drawing until his death.
