Princess Zimbazim

A bust-length portrait in Gibson's characteristic reed-pen line: a young woman shown in three-quarter profile, her gaze angled slightly away from the viewer. She wears a wide-brimmed hat rendered in dense hatching, trimmed with a sweeping ostrich feather that arches toward the upper-left corner. Her hair curls softly at the cheek; her expression is composed, verging on the faintly amused detachment Gibson consistently assigned to his idealized American women. No caption appears within the plate itself; the title belongs to the serialized fiction it illustrated—Robert W. Chambers's *The Princess Zimbazim* in Hearst's Magazine. The image carries no ethnic caricature. Gibson's signature appears in ink at lower center. The figure exemplifies the Gibson Girl type at its most refined: self-possessed, fashionable, and coolly attractive.