Lord Charles and Lady Marbletop

Hannah Barrett (American, b. 1966), 2010  (Credit: Hannah Barrett and Childs Gallery, Boston)

In 2010, the Gibson House Museum invited artist Hannah Barrett to create an imaginary series of Gibson portraits. Her surreal Tales from the House of Gibson: Lord Charles and Lady Marbletop presents Gibson on the rocks below Forty Steps — his figure drawn from a c. 1905 photograph — with his feet planted in his Red Study. Reclaiming the writer as a Queer icon, Barrett juxtaposes his muscular legs with an extravagantly plumed woman’s hat; echoing this hybrid, Barrett’s double-barreled title conflates Gibson’s aristocratic pretension with the name of a female character from one of his novels. Surrounded by grooming appurtenances and occupying multiple worlds, the writer appears as a dazzling chimera.