From the exhibition
Sketch of Phil May
C.D. Gibson · No later than 1903

Gibson draws the British caricaturist Phil May in confident profile: a young man in a double-breasted suit and bow tie sits slightly forward on a spindly parlor chair, one leg crossed, holding what appears to be a derby hat in his lap. He grins toward an unseen audience, relaxed and self-possessed. No caption accompanies the plate; the image functions as a collegial tribute, one pen-and-ink virtuoso saluting another. May was London's reigning comic draughtsman of the 1890s, celebrated for economical line work and streetwise Cockney subjects—precisely the tradition Gibson's *Life* readership would have recognized and admired. The drawing's loose, hatched strokes mimic May's own sketchy bravura, making the style itself part of the compliment.
C.D. Gibson Public domain