Actress - Camille Clifford 'original Gibson Girl' - Raphael Tuck postcard 1906

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Miss Camille Clifford - the Original Gibson Girl'
• Publisher:  Raphael Tuck 'Celebrities of the Stage' series 4413
• Postally used:  yes
• Stamp:  Edward VII half d. light green
• Postmark(s):  Norwich June 18 1906 cds
• Sent to:  Mr C. Rush, High Street, East Harling, Thetford
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Camilla Antoinette Clifford (29 June 1885 – 28 June 1971) was a Belgian-born stage actress and the most famous model for the ""Gibson Girl"" illustrations. Her towering coiffure and hourglass figure defined the Gibson Girl style.

Clifford was born in Antwerp, Belgium to parents Reynold Clifford and Matilda Ottersen. Camille was raised in Sweden, Norway and Boston.^[1] In the early 1900s she won US$2000 in a magazine contest sponsored by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson to find a living version of his Gibson Girl drawings: his ideal woman.^[2] Clifford became an actress, performing in the United States from 1902 and in England from 1904. She returned from London to Boston on 3 July 1906.^[3] While only playing walk-on, non-speaking roles, Clifford became famous nonetheless: not for her talent, but for her beauty. Her trademark style was a long, elegant gown wrapped around her tightly corseted, eighteen-inch wasp waist.

She retired from the stage and married Captain the Honourable Henry Lyndhurst Bruce in 1906. They had one child, Margaret, but the child died five days after birth. Her first husband was killed during The Great War in 1914.^[4]

She made a brief return to the stage after the death of her first husband. Then in 1917, married Captain John Meredyth Jones Evans. After the war she left the stage for good and later owned a stable of successful racehorses.^[5] Her second husband died in 1957.^[6]

Despite her reputation as ""the quintessential Gibson Girl"", she was by no means the only person to pose for the popular character.^[7]

Photographs of her taken by Lizzie Caswall Smith in 1905 often appear in historical fashion books and on websites to illustrate the Edwardian style.

The Gibson Girl was the personification of the feminine ideal of beauty portrayed by the satirical pen-and-ink illustrations of illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period that spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States. The artist saw his creation as representing the composite of ""thousands of American girls.""

The Gibson Girl was tall and slender, yet with ample bosom, hips and buttocks. She had an exaggerated S-curve torso shape achieved by wearing a swan-bill corset. Images of her epitomized the late 19th- and early 20th-century Western preoccupation with youthful features and ephemeral beauty. Her neck was thin and her hair piled high upon her head in the contemporary bouffant, pompadour, and chignon (""waterfall of curls"") fashions. The statuesque, narrow-waisted ideal feminine figure was portrayed as being at ease and stylish. She was a member of upper class society, always perfectly dressed in the latest fashionable attire appropriate for the place and time of day. Gibson depicted her as an equal and sometimes teasing companion to men.^[1]

In addition to the Gibson Girl's refined beauty, in spirit, she was calm, independent, confident, and sought personal fulfillment. (She could be depicted attending college and vying for a good mate, but she would never have participated in the suffrage movement.) She was also sexually dominant, for example, literally examining comical little men under a magnifying glass, or, in a breezy manner, crushing them under her feet. Next to the beauty of a Gibson Girl, men often appeared as simpletons or bumblers; and even men with handsome physiques or great wealth alone could not provide satisfaction to her. Gibson illustrated men so captivated by her looks that would they would follow her anywhere, attempting to fulfill any desire, even if it was absurd. One memorable drawing shows dumbstruck men following a command to plant a young, leafless tree upside-down, roots in the air, simply because she wanted it that way. Most often, a Gibson Girl appeared single and uncommitted; however, a romance always relieved her boredom. Once married, she was shown deeply frustrated if romantic love had disappeared from her life, but satisfied if socializing with girlfriends or happy when doting on her infant child.

type=printed postcards

theme=people

sub-theme=actresses

number of items=single

period=pre - 1914

postage condition=posted