Head of a Girl

A single head floats on cream stock, rendered entirely in pen-and-ink cross-hatching without background or caption. The subject is a young woman whose voluminous, loosely curled hair piles high above her forehead—the signature coiffure Gibson was codifying into cultural shorthand for the era's ideal of feminine beauty. Her gaze angles slightly upward and to her left, conveying self-possession rather than coyness. The draftsmanship is confident and economical: shadow is built through line density alone, and the lower face dissolves into suggestion, giving the portrait an unfinished vivacity that reads as spontaneity rather than incompletion.