The history of silhouettes

by Emily Jackson

PREFACE.

It has not been easy to gather up the threads of history concerning an art and handicraft long fallen into desuetude. Amongst the few who still work at black profile portraiture, none has been found who is cognisant of the traditions, nor who has any knowledge of the complex processes by means of which the fine eighteenth-century work was accomplished.

My sincere thanks are due to Mrs. Head, Mrs. Whitmore, Madame Nossof, Mrs. Wadmore, Mrs. Lea Carson (of Philadelphia), Mrs. Whetridge, Mr. Francis Wellesley, Mr. H. Palmer, Mr. Desmond Coke, Mr. Holworthy, Captain Pringle, Mr. H. Terrell (of Boston), Mr. Laurence Park, Dr. Beetham (descendant of Mrs. Beetham, the fine eighteenth-century silhouettist), Mr. J. A. Field, for the interesting series of portraits painted by his great-grandfather, and many others, who, possessing silhouettes, have allowed me to visit and make a study of their collections or have sent specimens for examination. Without their courtesy, and that of many others who gave me facilities for studying some thousands of specimens and advertisements, it would have been impossible to write this book. A subject on which there exists no written history, and which has hitherto received scant attention, requires much research amongst a large number of examples, amongst old newspaper matter, contemporary social history, and the trade labels of the silhouettists, for its faithful record.

More especially I am grateful to those who have kindly permitted me to reproduce their silhouettes, thus making clear to art lovers, and those who take pleasure in the curio, how manifold are the charms of family treasure, which would not otherwise have been available for study. To Herr Julius Leisching, Director Erzerzog Rainer Museum, I am indebted for information concerning silhouettists of Germany and Austria contained in his memorandums of the Industrial Museum; to Sir Sidney Colvin, Keeper of the Prints in the British Museum; to Mr. C. J. Holmes, Director of the National Portrait Gallery; to Mr. T. Corsan Morton, of the National Galleries of Scotland; to Mr. D. E. Roberts, of the Library of Congress, Washington, for access to special collections; to Mr. Horace Cox and Mr. T. P. O’Connor, with regard to pictures under their control in the “Collector” and the Magazine; to Lady Dorothy Nevill, for placing at my disposal the beautiful silhouette work of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of George III.; to Lady Sackville, for allowing me to study the silhouettes of Knole, and to reproduce some of the silhouette porcelain in her possession.

If fresh interest is kindled in the graceful art of the silhouettist, and the names of some little known artists are rescued from oblivion, my pleasant task will not have been in vain. Perhaps those who read these pages will find a charm and wistfulness in the shadow portrait. Beauty is not alone recorded by the brush of great artists, but also by minor workers. Gainsborough painted portraits of beautiful women at Bath, and Charles and Spornberg worked at their shades in the same street; the same clients visited both studios. The silhouette, poor relation of the miniature, the forerunner of Daguerre, shows the Belle of Cheltenham, or the Dandy of Bath and the Wells, appealing and dainty in shadowland, while the laughter of the shadow children echoes ghost-like as we note their toys and sports; they flit across the pages, they cast a shadow, and are gone.

E. J.

Oak Lodge, Sidcup.

CHAPTER I.
BLACK PROFILE PORTRAITURE: ITS PLACE IN ART, LITERATURE, AND SOCIAL LIFE.

Figures in black profile join hands round the wine-cups and oil-jars made by Etruscan potters; in silhouette men are armed to battle, women weave cloth and grind corn, children play at ball and knuckle-bones, life-like in shadow.

There is a pageant of profile portraiture on the mummy cases and frescoed tombs of ancient Egypt. Strange peoples are shown in outline as they lived; they go to war, they marry, their children play, the ritual of their Book of the Dead is pictured in profile three thousand years before the Christian era.

These flat and unsubstantial ghost figures come to us down the ages. From those mystic times when Crates of Sicyon, Philocles of Egypt, and Cleanthes of Corinth first worked in monochrome, there is an unbroken tale of men and women who have lived, loved, hated, and triumphed—Pharaohs and their slaves, Greek gods, and athletes; a French king, a murdered queen; Napoleon and his generals; statesmen and politicians; Goëthe, Beethoven, Burns, Wellington, Dickens, Washington, Harrison, Scott, and ten thousand others down to the present day. They come as colourless ghosts, relics of bygone men and women, shadows caught and held, while the realities have flitted across life’s stage and vanished.

Old Omar Khayâm, “King of the Wise,” in the twelfth century knew

“We are no other than a moving row

Of magic shadow shapes that come and go

Round with the sun, illumined lantern held

In midnight by the master of the show.”

He had not been busied with winning knowledge without seeing the deep significance of the shadow portrait. The familiar figure of the showman whose lantern displays the black moving figures in the midnight streets of Teheran appealed to him with vital force. He uses the shadow picture constantly as a simile in his matchless quatrains—

“Heav’n but the vision of fulfilled desire,

And hell the shadow from a soul on fire,

Cast on the darkness into which ourselves

So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.”

The subtle appeal of the silhouette is inevitably associated with death, in its legendary origin. Filled with joyous anticipation, thrilling with the thought of the woman he would soon hold in his arms, a lover returned after a short absence to find that his betrothed was dead; he rushed into the death chamber, maddened with grief, to look his last on the face of his beloved before it should be hidden from him for ever. There on the wall the shadow of the dead woman’s features appeared in perfect outline, for a taper at the head of the bier cast the shadow. With reverent hand the man traced the portrait, which he believed to have been specially sent as consolation.

There are other variants of the story. The Greek legend attributes the invention of painting to the daughter of Dibutades. Knowing that the passion of her lover was waning, she furtively sketched his shadow on the wall as he stood with the sun behind him. We are not told if this delicate way of indicating that even a shadow outline can be made permanent by a sufficiently determined young woman was of any use in making the love of the inconstant swain indelible.

Many artists have illustrated different phases of the basic idea as to the shadow having first suggested portraiture. Le Brunyn, Schenan, B. West, R.A., and Mulready are some of them.

We make no apology for studying the history of this art of the silhouettist in its latter-day manifestations. At its best, black profile portraiture is a thing of real beauty, almost worthy to take its place with the best miniature painting; at its worst, it is a quaintly appealing handicraft, revealing the fashions and foibles, the intimate domestic life and conventions of its day. It was executed by so many distinguished amateurs, from Etienne de Silhouette himself to Queen Charlotte and Princess Elizabeth of England, that few social histories or collections of letters of the eighteenth century fail to show how its strange chequer fitted into the fashionable life of the period.

Surely it is high time the art of black profile portraiture had a historian of its own and the great masters of silhouette portraiture were rescued from oblivion. Shadows are impalpable things which fade away almost before we are aware of their existence.

Year by year accident and the ravages of time lessen the number of these fragile curios; the beautiful portraits on ivory and glass, being the most fragile, are the first to go. Already it is not easy to find good examples in their original frames complete with convex glass and trade label of the artist pasted on the back. Mutilated examples with cracked wax filling or plaster paintings, chipped and incomplete, are still to be found; but even these have often been reframed, or have been broken open to renew glass or back, and so the trade label has been lost. The searcher who hopes to be successful in his quest has now to go very far afield, unless he be satisfied with the paper pictures of indifferent quality, interesting perhaps on account of the identity of the sitter or the fame of the cutter, but very far from equalling in beauty the best work of the masters in black profile portraiture. Some enthusiasts maintain that the least artistic profile shadow portrait has a curious individuality which redeems it from overwhelming ugliness; certainly the infinite variety of the processes and the fresh and vigorous outlines in unexpected media give a charm to the portrait in monochrome.

There is no sequence in the production of the different types. Some of the earliest specimens were cut in paper, for Mrs. Pyburg is said to have cut out the portraits of William and Mary in 1699; and certainly some of the beauties of Versailles were cut by Gonard in paper; the mid-Victorians worked in paper, and there are still a few cutters busy with their scissors. Glass, ivory, and plaster, oil-painting, smoke-staining, and Indian ink, all were used one by one or together. There is no evolution and gradual development to trace in the art and craft of the silhouettist; the pictures come before us like the shadows that they are, each process appearing and disappearing. Sometimes the same man worked in half a dozen different processes, using now one and now another, according to the taste or purse of the sitter, or guided by his own judgment as to the suitability of his subject for this or that medium of expression. The miniature shades for mounting in rings, brooches, scarf-pins, and pendants were not done exclusively by a few men, as one might surmise from their rarity; they were painted with the delicacy of a miniaturist by many of the silhouettists, who usually painted silhouettes of ordinary size. These jewel shadows are now very difficult to find, and it is probable no such collection as that of the late Mr. Montague Guest will ever come into the market again.

Into the lives of great personages, such as Goëthe, Napoleon, our English kings, queens, and princesses, the silhouette creeps with colourless persistence; there is no escaping it. Goëthe writes letters to his mother, and to Lavater, being touched with enthusiasm for the silhouette and its uses by the zealous Zürich minister. The poet cut a few himself. Napoleon presents glass profile portraits of himself in black on gold tinsel ground to his generals. Princess Elizabeth, daughter of George III., is a famous scissor-woman, and many are the pictures she cut, not only of her father, mother, and sisters, but also of trees, birds and flowers, rural scenes, cupids, and cupid groups.

Fanny Burney delights in the black portraits; all the Burney family are grouped together. She records her visits to the silhouettist Charles, when her attendance on the Queen as Maid of Honour was over. This portrait shows the famous creator of “Evelina” to be sprightly indeed; her delicate profile is well set off with curled and powdered hair, lace ruffle, and beribboned hat, whose tilt must surely have been learnt at Versailles.

Pepys lived too early to have his shadow taken. We feel sure the old coxcomb would have had a dozen of himself, mighty fine in new clothes, and perchance, if in generous mood, a single one of his wife in her old ones. [My father’s profile, cut in paper, is spoken of by Bulwer Lytton in “The Caxtons,” in the second volume.]

Horace Walpole, in his letter to Sir Horace Mann, written in 1761, desires him to thank the Duchess of Grafton on his behalf for the découpure of herself, this being, he explains in a note, “her figure cut out in card by M. Herbert, of Geneva, who was famous in that art.” This allusion at this early date again indicates that the cut silhouette was the earliest, as it certainly is the last survival, of the art. The scissor-type, it is still called by the old inhabitants of Suffolk, who well remember the visits of the itinerant artists.

Strange confusion has arisen in the minds of many admirers of silhouettes on account of the name. Black profile portraiture was practised long before Etienne de Silhouette economised in the public finance department of Louis XV., and the wits of the day nicknamed “silhouette” whatever was cheap and common.

In Swift’s “Miscellanies,” ed. 1745, vol. x., page 204, is a whole series of poems (full of the most eccentric rhymes) on silhouette portraits, e.g.:—

“On Dan Jackson’s Picture Cut in Paper.”

“To fair Lady Betty Dan sat for his Picture,

And defy’d her to draw him so oft as he piqu’d her.

He knew she’d no Pencil or Colouring by her,

And therefore he thought he might safely defy her.

Come sit, says my Lady, then whips out her Scissar,

And cuts out his Coxcomb in Silk in a trice, Sir.

Dan sat with Attention, and saw with Surprize

How she lengthen’d his Chin, how she hollow’d his Eyes,

But flattered himself with a secret Conceit

That his thin leathern (sic) Jaws all her art would defeat.

Lady Betty observ’d it, then pulls out a Pin

And varies the Grain of the Stuff to his Grin;

And to make roasted Silk to resemble his raw-bone

She rais’d up a Thread to the jett of his Jaw-bone,

Till at length in exactest Proportion he rose

From the Crown of his Head to the Arch of his Nose.

And if Lady Betty had drawn him with Wig and all,

’Tis certain the Copy’d out-done the Original.

Well, that’s but my Outside, says Dan with a Vapour;

Say you so? says my Lady; I’ve lin’d it with Paper.”

Swift, “Miscellanies,” vol. x., p. 205.

Another.

“Clarissa draws her Scissars from the Case,

To draw the Lines of poor D—n J—n’s Face.

One sloping Cut made Forehead, Nose, and Chin,

A Nick produc’d a Mouth and made him grin,

Such as in Taylor’s measure you have seen.

But still were wanting his Grimalkin Eyes,

For which grey Worsted-Stocking Paint supplies

Th’ unravell’d Thread thro’ Needle’s Eye convey’d,

Transferr’d itself into his past-board Head.

How came the Scissars to be thus out-done?

The Needle had an Eye, and they had none.

O wond’rous Force of Art! now look at Dan—

You’d swear the Past-board was the better man.

The Dev’l, says he, the Head is not so full—

Indeed it is, behold the Paper Skull.”

Tho. S⸺d, Sculp.

Swift, “Miscellanies,” vol. x., p. 206.

Another.

“Dan’s evil Genius in a Trice

Had strip’d him of his Coin at Dice;

Chloe observing this Disgrace,

On Pam cut out his rueful Face.

By G⸺, says Dan, ’tis very hard,

Cut out at Dice, cut out at Card!”

G. R⸺d, Sculp.

Now, Swift died in 1745, and may be said to have died to literature some years earlier. Silhouette’s cheese-paring economy was, we are told, induced by the deficit entailed “by the ruinous war of 1756,” consequently it could not have been before 1760 that his name would have become synonymous with cheapness. We thus have evidence that the art was in use at the least twenty years before his name could have been applied to it; and it does not at all appear that it was new then, as Mrs. Pyburg cut William and Mary’s portrait out of black paper in 1699. This nomenclature must, therefore, have been caused by his adoption of it as a pastime, and not by the reason given by I. D’Israeli and the Dict. Hist. This is an instance of how easily false derivations may be published even within so short a time of the events for which they profess to account.

A very slight study of silhouettes shows how characteristic is the pose of many of the old black profile portraits. In the shadow of George III., do we not see the embodiment of Lord Rosebery’s inimitable description, “the German Princelet of his day,” and in Pitt’s silhouette, with its “damned long, obstinate upper lip,” as his royal master so vigorously described it, there is the very ego of the man who was premier at twenty-five.

Goëthe’s letters to his mother are full of allusions to the novel portraiture which had been brought to his notice by Lavater, the Zürich divine, whose essay on Physiognomy, written for the promotion of the knowledge and love of mankind, is still read in Germany. The edition of 1794 is before us, and shows hundreds of silhouette drawings, for he wrote of the importance of reading character from people’s faces, and used the silhouette for this purpose. Thus the shadow portrait, once the amusement of amateurs, now began to have scientific significance.

Goëthe testifies that Lavater wished all the world to co-operate with him, and he arrived at Goëthe’s house on June 23rd, 1774, not only to take portraits of the young genius, but also of his parents. A year later Goëthe implores Lavater in a letter, “I beg you will destroy the family picture of us; it is frightful. You do credit neither to yourself nor us. Get my father’s cut out and use him as a vignette, for he is good. You can do what you like with my head too, but my mother must not stand there like that!”

An amusing sequel to this is that when, in the third volume of the “Physiognomy,” the councillor’s portrait appeared, but not that of Goëthe’s mother, she was much annoyed, and said that Lavater evidently did not think her face worthy to appear. The matter rankled, for in 1807 she had her head examined by Dr. Gall, “to find out if the great qualities of her son had, by any chance, been passed on to her.”

This much discussed silhouette of Goëthe’s mother is illustrated in “Goëthe’s Mother,” by Dr. Karl Heinemann, and fuller accounts of the poet’s attitude towards the silhouettists of his day, and the instructive and exciting deductions from their work, will be found further on in our volume.

In a letter from Fräulein von Göchhausen to Frau Rath—we use the translation of Mr. A. S. Gibb—the delight in the novel portraiture is shown, and incidentally the vivacity of the writer:—

“Weimar, the 27th December, 1781.

“I am sure, dearest mother, that you in your life have had many and varied joys; but whether you know any such joy as you have given me on Christmas Day, at least I wish it you! Your silhouette, so like! of such an excellent, dear, beloved woman! in such a costly, pretty, and stylish setting; and your letter—O your dear letter!—could I only say how indescribably admirable the letter is! Enough, dearest mother: from all my exclamations there is, alas, nothing further to be learned than that I am half out of my wits with excessive joy. The first day Goëthe had much to bear from me, for I almost ate him up. By monstrous good luck there was on that joyous day a grand dinner at the Duchess’s, and nearly half the town was assembled. I could, therefore, produce at once my splendid present (which will not so soon come off my so-called swan-like neck); and there was a questioning and a glancing at the beautiful novelty, and I was thoroughly wild, and people thought I must have had a gift of clear quicksilver.[1]

“Dearest woman, how shall I thank you! how ever deserve so much goodness—so without all desert and worthiness on my part! In return, I can, alas! do nothing, except to go on in my old jog-trot—love, honour, and obey you my life long. Amen!

“L. Göchhausen.”

[1] This seems a strange expression; but at that time, when anyone showed a restless activity, they would say that someone had given them quicksilver.

Later the craft of the silhouettist fell into disrepute when it had become part of the curriculum of young ladies’ schools; unskilful artists itinerated, pursuing their craft in booths and at fairs—one in the Thames Tunnel, several on the Chain Pier at Brighton. At street corners magic figures, with concealed workers, were used to entice the unwilling with mystery. Even Sam Weller, in his inimitable letter to Mary, laughs at the methods of the “profeel macheen.”

“So I take the privilidge of the day, Mary, my dear—as the gen’l’m’n in difficulties did ven he valked out of a Sunday—to tell you that the first and only time I see you your likeness was took on my hart in much quicker time and brighter colours than ever a likeness was took by the profeel macheen (wich p’raps you may have heerd on, Mary, my dear), altho’ it does finish a portrait and put the frame and glass on complete, with a hook on the end to hang it up by, and all in two minutes and a quarter.”

Such is the story, in brief, of the silhouette. Sometimes we see in it a little social document, elevated by fortuitous circumstances or scarcity of other pictorial record to historical value. As in the case of Robert Burns’s portrait, by J. Miers, and that of his brother, Gilbert Burns, by Howie, in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, at all times it is passively charming. Surely we need not scorn this step-sister of photography—this poor relation of the art world. In the words of Seraphim, when, in 1771, he flung wide the doors of his Shadow Theatre at Versailles—

“Venez garçons, venez fillettes,

Voir Momus à la silhouette;

Ou, chez Seraphim venez voir

La belle Lumeur en habit noir,

Tandes que ma salle est bien sombre

Et que mon a cleur n’est que l’ombre,

Puisse messieurs votre gaîté

Devenir la réalité.”

CHAPTER II.
THE COMING OF THE SILHOUETTE AND ITS PASSING.

There is a simplicity in the silhouette picture which brings it nearer to the Japanese print in its effect upon the mind than any other expression in art. All our attention is concentrated on outline, and in consequence there is a directness and vigour in the likeness which are lacking in more complex studies. Some Japanese artists, recognising this peculiar quality in the black profile portrait, supplement a conventionally drawn coloured portrait with a silhouette.

In Europe, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, the time was ripe for some popular outlet for the newly awakened interest in the old Greek classical method, for the recently excavated wonders revealed at Pæstum and Pompeii had appealed strongly to the popular taste, causing Greek purity of line and simplicity to dominate all ornament.

There was a natural rebound towards simplicity after the over-gorgeous detail in all domestic decoration under Le Roi Soleil, though exuberance survived for many years; the Greek influence may be traced from the latter half of the eighteenth century. Gradually the rococo absurdities disappeared; purity of line came back to architecture, and was manifested in furniture, in damask, brocade, and all ornamental expression, until at the beginning of the nineteenth century the mode in building design, decoration and dress was of the First Empire, and that is pure Greek.

The silhouette was another answer to the demand which gave us the reliefs after the antique which Flaxman and Josiah Wedgwood supplied.

At first these paper portraits must have seemed grotesquely cheap and ineffective to men to whom portraiture had hitherto meant a painting on canvas or panel, a delicate miniature, or an enamel of Limoges; but economy was in the air, the palmy days of reckless expenditure on personal matters by the few were over. Marie Antoinette was soon to wear India muslin instead of costly hand-made lace—very soon she might not even wear her own head; the gorgeously painted equipages of the Martin Brothers would give way to the less costly tumbrils. The days of fustian and the proletariat were coming; paper portraits instead of painting; then the apothecary picture-man, as Ruskin calls the photographer Daguerre.

The silhouette was the pioneer of cheap portraiture, which is now so great a factor in modern life. No wonder that, like all pioneers, the shadow portrait was made the butt of the wits.

Born in France, flourishing greatly in Germany, the silhouette soon reached England, and penetrated to the middle class, through the upper classes and court circles, the first English cut portrait that we can find record of being the cut silhouette of William and Mary in 1699. Then, while such men as Gonard were working in France, some of our best English exponents came to the fore. Miers, first of Leeds, then of London, painted generally in unrelieved black on plaster or ivory; John Field, his partner for thirty-five years, whose studio was thronged at 11, Strand, close to the old Northumberland House, which has now given way to Northumberland Avenue. Mrs. Beetham painted in shadowgraphy with exquisite skill, some of her jewel portraits rivalling the finest miniatures in quality. Charles, of 130, Strand, worked in Indian ink with pen on card, and produced such beautiful work that his trade description, “the first Profilist in England,” may well be excused.

It is interesting to note the very varied nomenclature of this art of black profile portraiture. H. Gibb and many others, besides Charles, call themselves Profilists.

Skiagraphy is used early.

The fashionable Shade is mentioned by half a dozen diarists and social writers of the eighteenth century, and was in more common use early in the nineteenth century. Horace Walpole gives us Découpure. Scissargraphist is used by Haines, of Brighton; in rural districts in Suffolk silhouettes are still called Scissartypes, quite regardless of whether the picture is of cut black paper or done with brush or pencil. Hubard, of Kensington and American fame, calls himself a Papyrologist, and his art that of Papyrolomia. In the Art Journal, 1853, p. 140, we read Papyrography is the title given to the art of cutting pictures in black paper.

Shadowgraphy was frequently used by the artists who took the portrait in shadow with or without the patent chair and wax candle so carefully described by Lavater, while some silhouettists are content to describe themselves as artists.

It was August Edouart, the Frenchman, who, wishing to emphasize the superiority of his methods over the machine-made shadows of his day, first used the words silhouette and silhouettist, or silhouetteur, in England. So great a novelty were these names that Edouart relates in his treatise how visitors constantly came to his salon to obtain the new silhouette portrait, and retired disappointed when they found it was only the familiar black shade which was offered to them.

Not only has there been much confusion in the popular mind with regard to the name of the silhouette, but also on account of the many different processes, and mixture of processes, used in their execution. Many silhouettists, as we have said, used several different ways of gaining the desired result. Mrs. Beetham, for example, painted exquisitely on ivory and plaster, with and without gold; she also cut out black paper, pasted it on card, and finished the edges with softening lines of paint on the background. This artist also painted on plaster and also on glass, so that very considerable study is required in order to judge unsigned examples.

Occasionally the whole process in silhouette cutting is reversed, and not only is a white paper portrait mounted on black, as in Mrs. Leigh Hunt’s silhouette of Byron, but the portrait is cut as a hole in a sheet of paper, and, on placing black paper, silk, or velvet at the back, the portrait outline is seen. The author owns an interesting silhouette locket in this manner, but examples are rare in England, though there are several at the Congressional Library at Washington.

Shadow portraits began to receive popular attention about 1770. At this date a picture was painted by J. C. Schenan (1740-1806), who also worked under the name of Johann Eleazar Zeisig.

The picture, which was extremely popular, was called “L’Origine de la peinture ou les portraits à la mode.” This showed a modern version of the old Greek legend. A lady, in a modish cap and deshabille, is having her shade outlined by a youth who holds a paper against the wall. This is the first hint at the movable picture which can be executed in one place and hung elsewhere; hitherto the wall or ground itself has been in place of the canvas. Two children are in the foreground, one holds up the cat while the other wields the pencil; another child makes a rabbit shadow with his fingers. Against the wall are many shadow pictures, all life-size, including one of a man, a dog, and a donkey. The dedication of the engraving of this picture runs thus: “Dediée à Son Altesse Serenissime Monseigneur le Prince Paladin du Rhin Duc regnant des Deux Ponts.”

Silver Wedding Anniversary Picture with Portraits and Emblems.

In the possession of the Author.

A century before, Frances Chauveau engraved a picture by C. le Brunyn which shows the traces of a shadow portrait on the wall. The figures are in classical dress—the woman steadies her subject with one hand while she pencils the shadow with the other. A winged love superintends the process.

The popularity of such pictures was easily accounted for. Those whose accuracy of vision and skill of hand were insufficient to achieve the fashionable freehand scissor-work, saw in this tracing method an easy way of making the black profile portraits.

The tracing of shadow pictures was considered to be of Greek origin, and the enthusiasm for any art of Greek origin was assured, and the amateurs prospered.

The inevitable book of instruction for amateurs appeared in 1779 in Germany, “Directions for silhouette drawing, and the art of reducing them, together with an introduction dealing with their physiognomical use.” It must be remembered, in its early days silhouetting was supposed to be the handmaid of scientific research, and it was very many years before the artists in black portraiture threw off this pose in connection with their work. This book is published by Römhild, Leipzig.

Another little book of 258 pages, with eleven copper-plate illustrations, is now very rare, dated 1780; it was published by Philip Heinrich Perrenon, bookseller, of Münster. Rules are given, advice as to materials, the reduction of portraits, their finish, ornamentation, etc. Processes on glass, in relief, etc., are described.

Pantographs and other mechanical processes were invented, the names of such things varying from the high-sounding parallelogrammum delineatorium to the “monkey” indispensable for silhouette artists. Other books are described more fully in our chapters on the processes.

The silhouette mania affected the engravers of the day; black portraits in copper-plate appeared, and were used to illustrate histories and biographies. Also domestic scenes, with elaborate backgrounds, such as the death of the Empress Marie Theresa, which occurred in 1780. This was to be had of Loeschen Köhl, of Vienna, in the High Market, No. 488. It appeared in “An Almanack for the year 1786,” with fifty-three silhouettes, published by Loeschen Köhl.

Large engraved silhouette pictures also appeared, and were sold separately, such as the Festivity on the Prater. Another variety now in the Höhenzollern Museum in Berlin shows Friedrich Wilhelm II., with his wife, four sons, and three daughters, walking in a garden. This picture is painted on glass, and is mounted on a red ground. Later, August Edouart achieved elaborate pictures, such as a skirmish of cavalry or sports. His figures were entirely scissor-work—and extraordinarily clever. The black portraits were mounted on drawn or lithographed backgrounds.

Many English books of a biographical nature were entirely illustrated with portraits in silhouette, notably, “The Warrington Worthies,” by James Kendrick, M.D., published in 1854 by Longman Brown, London; “Hints, designed to promote Beneficence, Temperance, and Medical Science,” by J. C. Lettsom, published in 1801, by J. Mawman. In the second volume of this work there are nine fine silhouette portraits.

In the memoir of Hannah Kilham, by her daughter-in-law, published by Darton Harvey, London, 1837, there is a beautiful silhouette portrait. Field, of the firm of Miers & Field, notifies on his trade label that he cuts silhouettes suitable for “frontispieces in literary work.”

In the porcelain factories of England and Germany silhouette pictures were used for the ornamentation of gift-pieces, and also for souvenir examples. In connection with such factories we may mention that a cup was made on which Dr. Wall, of Worcester fame, is painted in silhouette, and at the museum belonging to the Meissen factory, sixteen miles from Dresden, there is a portrait of Johannis Joachim Kändler, born 1706, King’s Court Commissioner and model master at the Royal porcelain factory. Rare and interesting specimens of silhouette porcelain are dealt with in a separate chapter. In glass, too, silhouette portraits were etched in gold leaf and in black on glass, which was then enclosed in another transparent layer of glass for protection.

The taste for the silhouette spread its glamour over many arts; it became vitiated on account of unskilled and inartistic work, and may be said to have fallen into disrepute in the early days of Queen Victoria.

It was then that the art of Miers and Field, Gibb and Charles, fell into the hands of unworthy exponents, whose works partake of the ineptitude of so much of the early Victorian art. There are silhouette portraits of the second quarter of the nineteenth century and later, which are amusing because of their vitality, interesting because of the people whom they portray, or because of a quaint bygone fashion; but with the exception of the work of Edouart, which stands alone on account of its superb technique, they are as a rule no longer examples which connoisseurs sincerely admire for their beauty. On the production of the real treasures of black portraiture the curtain was rung down about 1850. At that date the pageant of shadow pictures since the days of black outline on Etruscan vases ceased to be hauntingly beautiful, mystic, alluring; its subtle appeal was over.

CHAPTER III.
PROCESSES.
(1) Brushwork.

Research regarding the processes by which the shadow portraiture was produced, results in a baffling amount of material. Besides the professional silhouettists, who worked on definite lines of their own, or who used several of the processes from time to time according to the wishes of the sitter and the purpose for which the portrait was intended, there was a very large number of amateur workers who used any materials that came to hand and any process or mixture of processes which seemed good to them for gaining the desired result.

The silhouette portrait produced by the brush on ivory, card, or plaster is not necessarily the highest type, although it approaches most nearly to the work of the miniature painter, for the technique of one or two of the cutters, such as Edouart, is so fine that it lifts this humbler process on to the highest plane. Many miniature painters of the eighteenth century worked alternately in black profile portraiture and colour. Silhouettes thus done are, in fact, original profile portraits in monochrome; the process employed for producing them has nothing to do with scissor or penknife cutting.

Those who know only the picture of more or less shiny black paper stuck on card by inferior cutters of the early and mid Victorian era, are apt to consider the silhouette beneath contempt from the artistic point of view; but the collector who has studied fine examples, and who knows many processes, understands that each variety has its special charm, and that many have an individuality and dignity which raise them to a very high level.

John Miers, whose silhouette of Robert Burns is in the National Portrait Gallery of Edinburgh, worked at Leeds, and afterwards had headquarters in the Strand, opposite Exeter Change, where he was in partnership for many years with John Field, another silhouettist, whose work is of very fine quality. On most of Miers’ work he is described as “late of Leeds.” His early business label in Leeds is extremely rare. It is on a fine portrait of a man which lies before us. This is painted on plaster, and, like nearly all his early work, is untouched with gold.

Miers did an enormous amount of work on plaster and ivory, in the usual 2½ to 3 inch oval size, as well as the inch to half-inch size for mounting in rings, brooches, and pins. These latter are frequently signed “Miers,” sometimes “Miers and Field.” On a fine portrait by Field, during the time of the partnership with Miers, there is an advertisement on the back; the partners set forth the announcement at this period that they

“Execute their long approved Profile Likenesses in a superior style of elegance and with that unequalled degree of accuracy as to retain the most animated resemblance and character, given in the minute sizes of Rings, Brooches, Lockets, etc. (Time of Sitting not exceeding five minutes.) Messrs. Miers & Field preserve all the original shades by which they can at any period furnish copies without the necessity of sitting again.”

In the London Directory of 1792 John Miers’ name is first mentioned as “Profilist and Jeweller, 111, Strand”; in 1817, in the London Directory, “Miers & Son, Profilists and Jewellers”; ten years later, in Kent’s London Directory, 1827, “Miers & Field, Profilists and Jewellers”; and in the London Directory of the same date, “Profile Painters and Jewellers.”

Miers is frequently called the Cosway of silhouettists. This name is correctly suggestive in a double sense, for not only was he amongst the most charming and successful exponents of his art, as was Cosway, but his methods and brushwork on ivory were, with well-defined limitations, identical with those of the miniaturist.

We are able to reproduce the portrait of John Field, the partner of Miers, through the courtesy of his great-grandson. This silhouette was done by himself, and that of his wife is a companion picture. Portraits also of his two daughters, Sophie, afterwards Mrs. Webster, and her sister, who married E. J. Parris, the artist who decorated the dome of St. Paul’s, are amongst an interesting collection belonging to the Field family. All these are painted on plaster, and beautified with exquisite pencilling in gold. The muslin cap and dainty neck frills of the artist’s wife are handled with great skill. Field’s shop was next door to Northumberland House, No. 11, Strand, and here he amassed a very substantial fortune. He usually had several apprentices, both male and female, in his studio, and his brother being a skilled frame-maker, the Field frames, in black papier-mâché and brass mounts, are very dainty, while the jewel work in gold and pinchbeck is always suitable and sometimes beautiful. After many years the partnership between Miers and Field was dissolved, as a cloud seems to have settled on the life of the former artist, and we have not been able to find details of his latter years.

Mrs. Beetham also painted in unrelieved black on ivory or plaster, and connoisseurs are divided in opinion as to whether her work should not bear the palm instead of that of Miers. Examples are much more rare. Her label on the portrait of a woman in cambric stock and ruffle runs thus:—

“Profiles in Miniature by
Mrs. Beetham,
No. 27, Fleet Street.
1785.”

Sometimes Mrs. Beetham cut black paper, and used a little brushwork in the more delicate hair outlines, softening the hard paper line. This artist excels not only in the delicacy of her profile portraits, but also in the way in which she depicts, with the very limited materials at her command, the texture of hair, gauze, and ribbon ornaments.

A third process employed by Mrs. Beetham was the painting on glass of flat or convex shape. The painting was done on the back of the glass, and usually a backing of wax or plaster was placed to preserve the portrait. As a consequence of this filling of wax, many of these old pictures have suffered severely from extremes of temperature, cold shrinking the wax and causing disfiguring cracks, and heat, when the portraits were hung on the chimney wall, as they so frequently were, being no less disastrous.

Occasionally a shade painted on convex glass is found with a flat composition card or plaster background, upon which, standing away behind the rounded glass on which the portrait is painted, a beautiful shadow is cast by the painting.

This is perhaps one of the loveliest embodiments of the miniature shadow portrait, created independently of all shadow tracing, for the portrait is simply painted on the inside of a convex glass; yet the shade is there, dainty, alluring, created through the workings of one of nature’s laws; the brushwork becomes of secondary importance, and nature’s shadow the likeness. Rosenberg of Bath (1825-69), whose son was an associate of the Old Water-Colour Society, was a proficient in this process. His advertisement is quaintly worded in the small card found pasted on the back of his framed specimens:—

“Begs leave to inform the Nobility
And Gentry that he takes most striking
Likenesses in Profile, which he Paints
On Glass in imitation of Stone.
Prices from 7s. 6d. Family pieces,
Whole Lengths in different Attitudes.
N.B. Likenesses for Rings, Lockets,
Trinkets, and Snuff-boxes.”

This unusual allusion to imitation on stone is doubtless written to attract those who, cognisant of the recent discoveries in Pæstum and Herculaneum, were on the alert for portraiture in profile and ready to patronise an art which was well in accordance with the return to Greek feeling in matters artistic.

Another type of glass painting was executed by W. Jorden, who in 1783 painted the portraits of the Deverell family. These six fine examples show Thomas Deverell in ribbon-tied wig and shirt frill, Ann, Caroline, Susan, Elizabeth, and Hester; they were formerly in the collection of Mr. Montague Guest, and were sold for a large price at Christie’s. The work of Jorden differs considerably from the glass painting of other profilists, as he used flat glass instead of the convex, and his work is extremely bold and without detail, except in outline. He does not depend on any shadow casting for his charm in the work. Examples by Jorden are exceedingly rare.

A. Charles was another profilist of the eighteenth century, whose work has extraordinary charm. He used Indian ink and fine line together with the solid black work. Sometimes examples are to be found where the draperies and dress are in colour. A good specimen in the original wood oval frame, in the possession of Mr. Rowson, has a trade label on the back as follows:—

“Profiles taken in a new method by A. Charles, No. 130, opposite the Lyceum, Strand. The original miniaturist on glass, and the only one who can take them in whole length by a pentagraph. They are also worked on paper and ivory, from 2s. 6d. to £4 4s. They have long met the approval of the first people and deemed above comparison.

“N.B.—Drawing taught.”

Glass portraits were executed with a mixture of carbon made with pine-soot and beer, which gives an intense blackness. The process was sometimes inverted, and the flat or convex glass having been blackened with pine-smoke all over, the outline of the head or figure was then drawn in with a sharp point and the blackness removed, except where it served as the filling of the outlined objects to be silhouetted.

The back of such a portrait was then treated in one of the several different ways—gold leaf or gold tinsel paper was placed over the back, and was as a rule covered with a thin layer of wax, so that, looked at from the front, the silhouette portrait stood out from a gold ground; or, if the blacking process had been reversed, the gold portrait showed on a black ground.

Sometimes silver leaf was used instead of gold, and occasionally, as in the Forberger memorial picture in the Wellesley collection, and in a fine, small example at Knole, both gold and silver are used in the same picture.

In the Graz Museum in Germany there is a beautiful head of a youth painted on glass. A pyramid-like building also figures in the picture, both gold and silver foil being used as background.

We have seen gold-backed silhouette portraits showing profiles which, like the old puzzle pictures popular at the same period, are hard to decipher. Thus an urn is made the central feature of the picture, but the outline, varying slightly on either side, gives the profile of a man and his wife. Such quaint conceits were popular at the time. George III. and Queen Charlotte, or his successor and Queen Caroline, are sometimes the subject of such freakish portraiture in silhouette; this method in black and white survives to the present day.

The richness of the gold-leaf background made this variation of the profile portrait especially suitable for jewels. Lockets, brooches, and pins are the most usual form; these may be set in gold or in carved pinchbeck. Occasionally a tiny silhouette picture is in pearl framing, or an ornamental one of paste.

The silhouette rings are most frequently in the marquise setting; it was not unusual for a bequest to be made for profile portrait memorial rings. Occasionally some apt motto was engraved inside, such as, “Il ne reste que l’ombre.” The ethereal shadow picture seems to have specially appealed to the sentimental of the eighteenth century as a suitable reminder after death.

In the Wellesley collection there is a charming patch-box with three gold-backed profile portraits set in a row. None measures more than half an inch across; the faces are those of three lovely women. Another example is of a fine silhouette portrait of somewhat larger size, set in the lid of a small, round black lacquer snuff-box.

A mirror case was exhibited at the Silhouette Exhibition held in Maehren, Germany, in 1906, which had, on one side, the head and shoulders of a woman painted in black on glass. This was mounted on a yellow ground.

Finer than either of these is a patch-box in ivory, set in gold, with gold hinges and snap. In the centre is a gold set profile portrait of a man, signed by Miers; on either side there are beautiful panels of blue enamel. Doubtless this was a well-thought-out gift of a devoted admirer to the lady-love whose patches were to be held in this artistic box. A tiny oblong looking-glass is set in the inside of the lid to facilitate the adjustment of the beauty spots.

It is in work for the embellishment of such dainty things as these that the art of the profilist touches its highest point in minute work. Those who had the opportunity of examining the marvellous collection of the late Mr. Montague Guest can judge how these rare gems are not only beautiful in themselves, but speak of the illusive charm of the eighteenth century more eloquently than many other more costly bibelots.

The dainty sentimentality of a gold ring set with the shadow of a beautiful woman, or the scarf-pin with the shade of a friend; a locket with the unsubstantial reflection of a child’s face; who can resist the colourless appeal of so unobtrusive a jewel, which is yet one of such rich association and rare beauty?

The method most usual for profile portraits in minute size is the painting with Indian ink on ivory or plaster. We have seen these as small as a pea, but this is unusual; they are generally double that size for rings, or, for lockets and brooches, larger still.

J. Miers must have painted many of these jewels. Amongst the examples we have examined, some are plain black, probably of early date; some pencilled with gold. This process we cannot help surmising to have been a concession on the part of the artist to the popular demand which came early in the nineteenth century. In two signed examples, in the possession of the author, one is plain black—a man’s head, with tied queue wig and high stock with ruffle; the other, a woman exquisitely pencilled in gold, a lawn cap of Quaker shape on her head, a folded kerchief crossing her breast. Both are signed.

Authentic examples by Mrs. Beetham are rare, for she seldom signed her work; but there is a quality in them which usually proclaims their authorship. The nervous delicacy of the work equals that of Miers: the manipulation of accessories excels it when she is at her best.

These silhouette jewels, of fine quality, are very rare, and are much sought after. Unfortunately, like so many of our beautiful and artistic treasures, the boundless wealth of America is absorbing many good examples. Is it possible that a frame containing about forty of the finest examples of Field’s work went to America before the collection came up for public inspection in the auction room, when the Guest collection was dispersed?

A variant of the shadow portrait, painted on glass, shows a blue, rose, or green coloured paper or coloured foil taking the place of the gold or silver leaf ground. A beautiful locket in the Wellesley collection demonstrates the charm of this method to perfection. It is probably French.

In a book of instructions for the amateur silhouettists of Germany, published in Frankfurt and Leipzig by Philip Heinrich Perrenon, bookseller, of Münster, 1780, we are told: “One can use tinfoil for the ornamentation of silhouettes for hanging. When the glass is turned round, the places where the tinfoil is form a sort of mirror. If the background be black and the portrait the mirror, the effect is pretty, but it is as contrary to nature as a white shadow. It is best to have the ground of looking-glass, and to blacken or colour the silhouette.”

One of the earliest silhouettists was François Gonard, a Frenchman, whose processes seem to have been very varied. Unlike most of the early shade-makers, he did not make a speciality of any particular process. His profile portraits were painted on ivory and plaster, and were occasionally cut out in paper and engraved on copper for reproduction; in fact, he seems to have practised every kind of profile portraiture.

Born at St. Germain in 1756, he was taught copper engraving at Rouen, and was specially clever in reducing copper-plate engravings. In the Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes, Joubert relates having seen a plan of St. Petersburg engraved in minute size by Gonard, who had reduced it from one of much larger size. This brings us to the pantograph.

In Le Journal de Paris, 1788, Le Sieur Gonard, who is called a dissenateur physionomiste, announces that he is in a position to take silhouette portraits quicker than any other artist. He will make these for 24 sols each, but he will not make less than two for each person. The price of those of minute size, suitable for mounting, as boxes, lockets, and rings, is £3. He also announces silhouettes à l’Anglaise; these have the dress and head-dress added, and the price is £6 each, whether they be on ivory for wearing as an ornament or on paper to be framed. Whether the paper is scissor-work—the profile cut out of black paper—or the black drawing is made on paper, we are not told. For this latter type a sitting of one minute only was necessary, and the following day the portrait was finished.

Another process, which he describes as silhouette colorée, can also be done. These seem to have been more like miniatures; they cost £12, and a three-minute sitting was required. The portrait was finished on the next day but one.

Gonard’s address is given as the Palais Royal, under arch No. 166, on the side of the Rue des bons Enfants, and he describes how a lantern shall be lit each evening to facilitate the finding of his salon on dark nights. The lantern had silhouettes on it, as a sign for the footmen bringing carriages.

One cannot help imagining the scene when gay aristocrats, with powdered heads and dainty brocades, drove up to have their pictures taken in the fashionable mode, and beaux, with lace cravats and wigs, trod the floors of the studio with steps as firm as they might be three years hence when mounting the steps of the guillotine. How many of those beauties of the court of Louis XVI. were left when the terrors of the Revolution were past? How many of the pathetic little paper shadows have come down to us, fragile, indeed, but outliving the doomed originals by a century and a half?

As would be imagined, Gonard used elaborately engraved mounts to add to the grace of his portraits, and occasionally he used relief in white, grey, or colour in the execution of the portrait.

The view that the shadow portrait should remain a shadow always in black is held by one of the most prolific of all silhouettists, Edouart, whose work is fully described in the chapter on Freehand Scissor-work. In deploring the decline of the public taste for shadow portraiture, he says in his treatise on Silhouette Likenesses:—“As something was wanting to revive the expiring taste of the public for these black shades, some of the manufacturers introduced the system of bronzing the hair and dress. To what species of extravagant harlequinade this gave rise, the public is sufficiently aware. I cannot avoid making my observations concerning profile likenesses taken by patent machines, which possess sometimes all the various colours of the rainbow: for example, every day there is to be seen in the shops this kind of profile, with gold hair drawn on them, coral earrings, blue necklaces, white frills, green dress, and yellow waistband, etc. Is it not ridiculous to see such harlequinades? The face, being quite black, forms such a contrast that everyone looks like a negro! I cannot understand how persons can have so bad and, I may say, a childish taste! Very often those likenesses are brought to me to have copies made of them, and it is with the greatest trouble I am able to make them understand that it is quite unnatural; and that, taking a silhouette, which is the facsimile of a shade, it is unnecessary for its effect to bedizen it with colours.

“I would not be surprised that by-and-by those negro faces will have blue or brown eyes, rosy lips and cheeks; which, I am sure, would have a more striking appearance for those who are fond of such bigarrades.

“It must be observed that the representation of a shade can only be executed by an outline; that all that is in dress is only perceived by the outward delineation; consequently, all other inward additions produce a contrary effect of the appearance of a shade.

“Here it may be said that every one has not the same taste; some like colour which others dislike; some find ugly what others find beautiful; and, in fact, des gouts et colours on ne peut pas disputer. But every artist or real connoisseur will allow with me that when nature is to be imitated, the least deviation from it destroys what is intended to be represented.”

Edouart concludes with some severe remarks. “It is a pity that artists, in whatever line they profess, should give way to those fantastic whims, and execute works against all rules; for if they would employ their time in proper studies, and try to show the absurdity of encouraging whatever deviates from the true line of nature, they would improve themselves, and in time would derive greater benefit than in executing things which only bring scorn and ridicule from people of discernment.”

Despite the opinion of Edouart, with which most connoisseurs of the present day heartily agree, much silhouette work was finished in colour. We have before us a delicately painted lady of the Early Victorian period. She wears a grey dress with graceful pleated sleeves, a deep embroidered muslin collar, and the most bewitching cap tied with blue ribbons. Her face and hands only are shadow black. The delightful ringlets of the period are marked in gold, and she is writing in a note-book with a gold pencil, quite a blue-stocking occupation for a lady of that period. In the collection of Dr. A. Figdor, Vienna, there is an elaborate picture of a mother with a young child on her knee; two elder children and her husband complete the group. Only the heads in this group are black. Again, Professor Paul Naumann, of Dresden, owns the silhouette of a Moor. The clothing is brightly coloured, the head alone black. Every collector will find he has some examples where colour has been used to relieve the black of the card, ivory, or glass painting.

It must be remembered that this was the time of glass pictures of the ordinary coloured type, and this glass painting—Églomisé, as the process is called by the learned Dr. Leisching—would naturally influence the minds of the profile portrait painter on glass. So it came about that the two allied crafts gradually overlapped in ideas, and method and points of colour began to appear in uniform or other parts of the picture where colour would obviously add interest of a historical or sentimental character to the silhouette portrait, and in the glass picture of saint or Bible history. The glaring colours hitherto used to appeal to the popular taste began to be modified, and examples are found where the figures are all in black, the background alone being coloured; so that the glass picture is to all intents and purposes a silhouette on a coloured ground.

Of this type is the picture at the Francesco Carolinum Museum at Linz, where eight musicians in uniform are shown in black in the chapel. There is a good deal of wreath and ribbon decoration, and two small curtained windows are in the background.

An important example of the black glass painting on coloured ground is the picture on a red ground in the Berlin Museum. Other red and black silhouette works are owned by Lady Sackville, who has an extraordinarily interesting collection of the Ansley family, painted by Spornberg in 1793. Each portrait is signed and dated, the address of the artist, No. 5, Lower Church Street, Bath, being given on one. These pictures are painted on convex glass in black; the background, outlines of the face, dress, hair, and elaborate wigs, caps and hats, together with the eyes, and slight shading, being painted in black. Over the whole an orange red paint is then worked in at the back, so that one sees from the front the red bust figure shown in black lines on the black background.

CAPTAIN ROBERT CONIG

Of His Majesty’s 90th Regiment of Infantry

Painted on Card. In the possession of Lady Sackville, Knole

Coloured grounds are very rarely found in connection with English silhouette work. One, in the possession of the author, is of a boy’s head finely painted on ivory; the background is tinted blue, the whole mounted in a chased gold locket of the period, early eighteenth century.

Abroad, especially in Germany, we constantly find coloured backgrounds and coloured cardboard mounts, with or without wreaths or other ornamental frames.

In the catalogue of the Silhouette and Miniature Exhibition held at Brünn from April 22nd to May 20th, 1906, there was much work of the kind:—

The silhouette numbered 67. Head and shoulders of a young man. Silhouette painted on glass on a brown ground. At the back the letters A. J. L.

No. 77. Round lacquer box with head and shoulders of a man in silhouette on a yellow ground, gold glass mount. Owner: R. Blümel, Vienna.

No. 99. Head of an officer, silhouette, painted on glass, blue ground.

No. 106. Lady walking, silhouette on glass, blue ground.

No. 26. Gentleman sitting at a writing-table, painted on glass, yellow silk background. French, Louis XVI.

No. 127. Lady sitting at a table, companion picture.

Other silk-mounted pictures are numbered 154.

Elise Herger (née V. Pige) and the Countess Chotek, both painted on glass and mounted on silk.

No. 159. Two female and two male heads, probably members of the noble family of Belcredi, silhouettes, cut out of paper and mounted on mother-of-pearl, 1800.

No. 184. In this there is a fresh variety of mounting. The head and shoulders of a man in painted silhouette, on glass; this shows up over white paper. Above this portrait, within the same frame, is a semicircle of nine female figures in silhouette over blue foil; completing the circle is a gold laurel branch. This example is signed “Fecit Schmid, Vienna, 1796.”

Schmid, of Vienna, seems to have constantly used coloured backgrounds. A fine drawing by him, on glass, of Sophie Landgravine Fürstenberg, 1787-1800, is mounted on green; this was painted in 1800. It is an interesting specimen, as it is one of the rare examples of silhouette work in which human hair is used. At the back there is a landscape drawing in silhouette, on glass. The brook in the sylvan scene is put in with the waved lines of hair. It is remarkable that Edouart, who was a skilled worker in human and animal hair before he was a silhouette cutter, never combined the two crafts.

A strange variant of the dressed picture must be mentioned in connection with silhouettes where colour and exotic processes are employed. In four examples in the possession of Dr. Beetham, descendant of Mrs. Beetham, the fine silhouette painter, of 27, Fleet Street, the face, hair, arms, hands, and neck are cut out of black paper. The vase, in the example illustrated, is also in black, in this case, as in the less rare dressed engravings of the same period. The dress of the figure is made up of deftly arranged scraps of material. The head-dress is of spotted black, outlined by narrow bands of black paper; the bodice and skirt are of linen, with purple bands; the outstanding paniers are of faded scarlet flowered cotton; the flowers in the vase are painted, being outlined in gold. There are also dressed silhouettes in the possession of the Beck family. These show the Quaker dress in folded material with the black silhouette. All these examples are probably the work of clever amateurs.

CHAPTER IV.
PROCESSES.
(2) Shadowgraphy and Mechanical Aids.

Up to this point we have discussed only those processes which entail hand drawing with pen, pencil, or brush, which are undoubtedly an attractive type of the shadow picture, whether they are executed on ivory, plaster, or paper; their backing with wax, gold, or silver leaf tinsel, on coloured paper makes accidental varieties of the one type.

Any of these processes require a good deal of artistic training, even if the shade is used as a guide, for unless there is skill in catching a likeness, or delicacy and charm in drawing, black portraiture has nothing whatever to recommend it. However the silhouette is executed, the mechanical appliances play so important a part in nearly all the processes that they need a chapter to themselves. In order to popularise the black portrait, some means of achieving it was required which could be used by persons without talent or artistic training.

It was here that shadowgraphy came to the fore. Even the most ignorant in art work could trace a shadow when thrown upon white paper on a wall or specially made screen, and if the full life-size were considered too large, the Singe, pantograph, or other contrivance could reduce its size; then only scissors were required, and the silhouette-by-machinery maker felt himself to be as gifted as the black portrait painter, or the freehand scissor-cutter, whose work we describe in another chapter.

Etienne de Silhouette, born in 1709, amused himself with the craze of the day. His craft, belonging essentially to this section of mechanical execution, deserves special mention, not because he invented the black profile portrait, for they were made sixty years before he was born, but because his name was given to it in derision, and has stuck to it ever since. Being finance minister, he was supposed to be a promoter of the fine arts, but such was his economy, or meanness, that artists styled his paper pictures “portraits à la silhouette,” a name synonymous with paltry effort and cheapness. This did not, however, deter people from patronising the silhouette artists, nor of attempting, themselves, to achieve the machine-made variety of the fashionable black portrait.

In the Journal Officiel, published in Paris, August 29th, 1869, we read:—“Le Chateau de Berg sur Marne fut construit en 1759 par Etienne de Silhouette ... une des principales distractions de se seigneur consistait à tracer une ligne autour d’un visage, afin d’en avoir le profil dessiné sur le mur: plusieurs salles de son chateau avaient les murailles couvertes de ses sortes de dessins que l’on appelle des silhouettes du nom de leur auteur de nomination que est toujours resté.”

In the seventeenth century, dillettantism was an obsession with the leisured classes. The tendency of the time towards Greek art, as has been indicated in another chapter, helped to popularise the scissor-work of this type of shadow portraiture, and it became a fashionable craze. Though the cutting out with scissors and penknife sometimes took the form of landscape groups and small whole figures, the profile alone in small, though not miniature size, proved the most fascinating branch of scissor-work, and survived the longest in the favour of amateurs, because the purely mechanical shadow tracing required no skill, and inevitably gave a life-like likeness if traced with reasonable care.

There were several methods of securing steadiness on the part of the sitter and the best result as to arrangement of candle-light essential to the success of the portrait. Lavater, who believed so sincerely in the infallibility of the silhouette as an assistance in his physiognomical studies, gives elaborate directions as to how to obtain the best results. He says in Lecture XVI. (we spare our readers the long observations on silhouettes):—

“It may be of use to point out the best method of taking this species of portraits.

“That which has hitherto been pursued is liable to many inconveniences. The person who wants to have his portrait drawn is too incommodiously seated to preserve a perfectly immovable position; the drawer is obliged to change his place; he is in a constrained attitude, which often conceals from him a part of the shade. The apparatus is neither sufficiently simple nor sufficiently commodious, and, by some means or other, derangement must, to a certain degree, be the consequence.

“This will happen when a chair is employed expressly adapted to this operation, and constructed in such a manner as to give a steady support to the head and to the whole body. The shade ought to be reflected on fine paper, well oiled and very dry, which must be placed behind a glass, perfectly clear and polished, fixed in the back of the chair. Behind this glass the designer is seated; with one hand he lays hold of the frame, and with the other guides the pencil. The glass, which is set in a movable frame, may be raised or lowered at pleasure; both must slope at bottom, and this part of the frame ought firmly to rest on the shoulder of the person whose silhouette is going to be taken.

“Toward the middle of the glass, is fixed a bar of wood or iron furnished with a cushion to serve as a support, and which the drawer directs as he pleases by means of a handle half an inch long.

“Take the assistance of a solar microscope, and you will succeed still better in catching the outlines; the design also will be more correct....

“There are faces which will not allow of the most trifling alteration in the silhouette, or strengthen or weaken the outline but a single hair’s-breadth, and it is no longer the portrait you intended; it is one quite new, and of character essentially different.”

In this work of silhouette-making and physiognomical study, Lavater wished the whole world to co-operate with him, as Goëthe testified. On a long journey down the Rhine, he had the portraits taken by his draughtsman, Schmoll, of a great number of important people. This served the secondary purpose of interesting his sitters in his work. He also asked artists to send him drawings for his purpose, and wrote much on the physiognomical character of the figures in the pictures of such artists as Raphael and Vandyck.

Goëthe was intensely interested, and there is much of his correspondence extant on the subject. Enthusiastic at first, his zeal seems to have waned. On June 23rd, 1774, Lavater arrived at Goëthe’s house with Schmoll, and portraits were taken of the author of “The Sorrows of Werther,” and of his parents.

A year later, in August, 1775, Goëthe writes, imploring Lavater, “I beg you will destroy the family picture of us; it is frightful. You do credit neither to yourself nor to us. Get my father cut out, and use him as a vignette, for he is good. I do entreat of you to do this; you can do what you like with my head too, but my mother must not be recorded like that.”

An amusing sequel to this correspondence is that when the third volume of Lavater’s “Physiognomy” appeared containing her husband’s portrait alone, the councillor’s wife was extremely offended, and says that evidently the author did not think her face worthy to appear.

A scrap-book full of these machine- and scissor-made silhouettes, with copious notes made by Lavater on the character of the sitters, judged by the shadow portraits, is one of the chief treasures in the collection of Mr. Wellesley, and forms an important item in silhouette history in its use for scientific purposes.

A machine for the use of amateurs is owned by Dr. Beetham, descendant of Mrs. Edward Beetham, the clever silhouettist of Fleet Street. This machine for taking silhouettes is a box about the size of a cigar box. One end has a lens glued into a sliding block or frame for focusing purposes. A piece of looking-glass reflects the object on to a piece of frosted glass on the top of the box. The subject is drawn from this reduced shadow.

There were others besides Lavater who published advice as to the best way of taking silhouettes.

In “A Detailed Treatise on Silhouettes: their Drawing, Reduction, Ornamentation and Reproduction,” published in 1780, the author, after many allusions to prisma, cylinder, pyramid, cone, the sun and moon, and perpendicular and horizontal lines, gives indispensable rules for the silhouetteur:—

1. The surface on which the shadow is made must be upright.

2. It must be parallel with the head of the sitter.

3. The imaginary line running from the centre of the flame to the middle of the profile must be horizontal with the surface on which the shadow is to be cast.

4. The light must be as far from the head as possible, but the surface for drawing on must be as near the head as possible.

As will be seen from the print taken from Lavater’s book, these rules were fairly accurately carried out in the chair depicted. Practical hints are also given in the treatise as to paper, light, pencils, etc. Great stress is laid on the importance of obtaining paper large enough for the drawing of the enormous modern head-dress of women, for which, sometimes, two pieces were put together. We have seen interesting examples of this, where the paper is actually joined together with the thin old-fashioned pins of the period, and life-size heads, executed in black paper, in a country house in Sussex.

“A wax light is better than tallow or suet,” this careful mentor continues, “as there is nothing so harmful as a flare, which makes the shadow tremble. If one cannot obtain a wax candle, and must use a lamp, let it be dressed with olive oil. Coughing, sneezing, or laughing are to be avoided, as such movements put the shadow out of place.”

The reduction of shadow portraits so taken is then described at length, and by various methods, “as the physiognomical expression is more piquant in a reduced silhouette.” “The best of these mechanical reducers is the Stork’s Beak or Monkey (this is our present-day pantograph), which consists of two triangles so joined by hinges that they resemble a movable square, which is fixed at one point of the base of the drawing, while a point of the larger triangle follows the outline of the life-size silhouette. A pencil attached to the smaller triangle traces the same outline smaller and with perfect accuracy. By repeating these reductions, silhouettes may be made in brooch and locket size.”

“With regard to the ornamentation and finish of the silhouette portrait, black paint should be used.” We presume this would be for the fine lines of the hair, which are sometimes added to the background after paper-cut silhouettes are mounted. Chinese or Indian ink is advised, or pine-soot, mixed with brandy, gum, or beer.

Advice is also given as to painting round the paper outline: the paint should be put on from the pencil outline towards the centre. The anonymous author suggests that two portraits should be cut at once; the first to be stuck into the family album, the second to be hung upon the wall.

For such decorative purposes elaborate instructions are given. “Take a nice clear sun-glass and clean it with powdered chalk and clean linen to remove all grease and dirt. Cover this glass on one side with finely powdered white lead mixed with a little gum-water. When this is dry take the silhouette, which has been cut out of strong paper, place it on the powdered surface, and trace round the outline with a needle; remove the silhouette, and scrape away all the white within the drawn line. Thus one obtains a transparent silhouette, which can be turned into a black one by laying a piece of black velvet at the back of the glass, or if not velvet, fine black cloth or taffeta or paper.”

This silhouette recipe maker also suggests that the cut-out black silhouettes can be stuck on to the glass with Venetian turpentine, and the glass then treated with the white covering; or one can use tinfoil, which forms a mirror.

This brings us back to the background treatment for painted silhouettes without the aid of shadowgraphy and scissor-work, so that we need not repeat the various kinds.

In this remarkable book, which is in the possession of Professor Dr. Th. Slettner (Münich), and for a description of which we are indebted to Herr Julius Leisching, a further description of silhouette-making is given:—“By sticking together three or four sheets of paper and working at the back with a polishing steel, one can actually make a profile portrait in slight relief out of a cut-out silhouette in white paper, ‘giving it the appearance of a marble tablet or a plaster cast done by a sculptor,’” adds this enthusiast.

A treatise on this method exists in English, entitled “Papyro-Plastics; or the Art of Modelling in Paper, with Directions to cut, fold, join, and paint the same,” with eight plates, published in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Mention is also made of silhouettes in enamel on copper for snuff-boxes, lockets, and rings, and the black profile portraits on porcelain in the German volume.

Finally, the author praises a process by which, by means of a stencil, one can make one hundred copies a minute, and the reproduction of the silhouette portrait by woodcut and copper-plate impressions.

A second book appeared simultaneously, if not immediately before the treatise. It was published by Römhild at Leipzig, and in the following year (1780) Philip Heinrich Perrenon brought out a third, which is called “Description of Bon Magic; or the Art of Reduplicating Silhouettes easily and surely.”

The principal process is one which the author describes as “so simple that every woman who can make silhouettes can practise it as well as the best artist.”

“Take a piece of flat tin, polish it on one side, put the drawing on it and cut out the tin accordingly, and the form is obtained. Rub this form on the side to be printed off on a flat stone with sand. Damp some paper, and make a black mixture out of linseed oil and pine-soot. Make a pair of balls of horsehair covered with sheepskin. Get a small piece of hat felt. Blacken the shape or form with the black mixture put on with the horsehair ball; place it on the table, and over it, on the blackened side, the damp paper, on this a few sheets of waste paper and then the felt. Now nothing but the press is required; this consists of a rolling-pin, which can be made by any turner. Roll it over, and when the paper is taken away the silhouette, en Bon Magic, appears printed off.”

Illustrations of various implements are given, besides a simple pantograph for reducing the life-size shadow. Many pantographs are mentioned in connection with silhouette work. It is probable the earliest one was invented by Christopher Scheiner, a Jesuit, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was called the parallelogrammum delineatorium.

We meet it again in England, where mercifully its name is shortened, and it is interesting to see that it is a woman who applies for protection of her invention. The abridgment of her specification runs thus:—

Patents for Inventions.

Abridgments of Specifications.

Artists’ Instruments and Materials.

1618-1866.

A.D. 1775, June 24.—No. 1100.

Harrington, Sarah.—“A new and curious method of taking and reducing shadows, with appendages and apparatus never before known or used in the above art, for the purpose of taking likenesses, furniture, and decorations, either the internal or external part of rooms, buildings, &c., in miniature.” The person whose likeness is to be taken is placed so “as to procure his or her shadow to the best advantage, either by the rays of the sun received through an aperture into a darkened room, or by illuminating the room.” The face is then brought “directly opposite the light, so that the shadow may be reflected through a glass (or transparent paper);” the glass is movable in a frame “so as to fix it on a level direction with the head of the person.” The outline of the shadow is then traced with a pencil, &c., after which it is “reduced to a miniature size by an instrument called a pentagrapher.”

Respecting furniture, &c., “the articles required to be taken are to be placed in such a direction that their shadows may be reflected as above described, traced out in the same manner and reduced.” The shadows (as also the likenesses) are cut out “and placed upon black or other coloured paper or any dark body” and the external parts are, if required, decorated with cut paper, &c.

When a likeness is to be taken, accompanied with the external “part of a room or buildings,” a camera obscura is used; the reflected shadows are received on paper, the outlines are carefully marked, and then “either fill’d up with Indian ink or coloured, or cut out as above directed.”

[Printed, 4d. No Drawings.]

On December 22nd, 1806, Charles Schmalcalder applied for a patent for a machine of the same type, but of more complicated construction. We give the abridged specification, for it forms a humble though important link in silhouette history, having been much used by itinerant silhouettists at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

A.D. 1806, December 22.—No. 3000.

Schmalcalder, Charles.—“A delineator, copier, proportionometer, for the use of taking, tracing, and cutting out profiles, as also copying and tracing reversely upon copper, brass, hard wood, cardpaper, paper, asses’ skin, ivory, and glass, to different proportions, directly from nature, landscapes, prospects, or any object standing or previously placed perpendicularly, as also pictures, drawings, prints, plans, caricatures, and public characters.” This apparatus is composed of (1) a hollow rod “screw’d together, and from two to twelve feet, or still longer, chiefly made of copper or brass, sometimes wood, or any metal applicable;” the diameter is from half an inch to two inches and upwards, according to the length; one end carries a fine steel tracer, made to slide out and in and fastened by a milled-head screw, and in the other is “a round hole to take up either a steel point, blacklead pencil, or any other metallic point, which may be fastened therein by a mill’d-head screw;” (2) a tube about ten inches long and sufficient in diameter to allow the rod “to slide easily and without shake in it;” (3) a ball (in which the tube is fixed) “moveable between two half sockets;” (4) a frame of wood about two and a half or three feet long (the length depending on the length of the rod) and supported by two brackets; (5) a swing-board attached to the frame; (6) a clamp-screw; (7) a hook hanging on a string for the rod to rest in; (8) a weight on the back of the frame, connected thereto by a hook, “to which is attached a string forming a pulley, serving to prevent the point from acting upon the paper when not wanted.” Through the sides of the frame are holes at certain distances corresponding with marks on the rod, and “in copying any original, supposing to the size of ⅛, ¼, ½, ¾, &c.,” the swing-board and clamp-screw “must be transplanted to the different holes and divisions corresponding.” The paper or other substance is fastened to the swing-board by screws or is placed in a brass frame which slides up and down the board, and is kept in position by a spring. “The machine is fixed either to a partition in any room or to any piece of wood portable, and so constructed as to be easily fixed upright with a screw-clamp upon a table or any other stand.” In turning the rod round in the sockets “the tracer and point in the two ends of the rod must remain in the centre, to obtain which sometimes an adjustment with four screws” is required.

Directions are given for using the apparatus in taking profiles, in copying and tracing pictures, landscapes, &c., and in copying from nature “landscapes or whatever object exposes itself to view.”

[Printed, 6d. Drawing. See “Repertory of Arts,” vol. 10 (second series), p. 241; “Rolls Chapel Reports,” 7th Report, p. 195.]

Still lower was the shadow portrait to fall, when another contrivance was invented to trick the public into the belief that magic played a part in producing the likeness. An automatic figure was taken round the country which it was claimed could draw silhouettes. Somewhere about 1826 the automaton was brought to Newcastle, and is described as a figure seated in flowing robes with a style in the right hand, which by machinery scratched an outline of a profile on card, which the exhibitor professed to fill up in black. The person whose likeness was to be taken sat at one side of the figure, near a wall. “One of our party,” says an eye-witness, “detected an opening in the wall, through which a man’s eye was visible. This man, no doubt, drew the profile, and not the automaton. Ladies’ heads were relieved by pencillings of gold.”

The son of the great, little Madame Tussaud, who began her wax modelling in the Palais Royal in the days of the French Revolution, taking death-masks of many of the guillotine victims, thus advertises in 1823:—“J. P. Tussaud (son of Madame T.) respectfully informs the nobility, gentry, and the public in general, that he has a machine by which he takes profile likenesses. Price, 2s. to 7s., according to style.”

This machine was probably of the kind described by Blenkinsopp in Notes and Queries:—“A long rod worked in a movable fulcrum, with a pencil at one end and a small iron rod at the other, was the apparatus. He passed the rod over the face and head, and the pencil at the other end reproduced the outline on a card, afterwards filled in with lamp-black.”

It is probable that Edward Ward Foster, who described himself as “Profilist from London,” used such a machine, which he thus describes:—“The construction and simplicity of this machine render it one of the most ingenious inventions of the present day, as it is impossible in its delineation to differ from the outlines of the original, even the breadth of a hair.

“Mr. F. wishes the public to understand that, besides sketching profiles, this machine will make a complete etching on copper-plate, by which means any person can take any number he thinks proper, at any time, from the etched plate; and for the further satisfaction of the public, he will most respectfully return the money paid if the likeness is not good. Profiles in black at 5s. and upwards, etc. Derby, January 1, 1811.”

Mr. West, miniature and profile painter, from London, worked with the same machine. His prices were:—profiles on card, in black, 5s.; in colours, 10s. 6d.; on ivory, in colours, one guinea and upwards.

We have succeeded in tracing the recorded description of one of the sitters who actually had a portrait taken by such an instrument, and also one who saw such an instrument as late as 1879. The account is by Mr. H. Hems, Fair Park, Exeter, and brings our tale of mechanical contrivances in connection with silhouette portraiture to a fitting close:—

“Happening to be at Dundee at the time of the Tay Bridge disaster (it occurred upon the last Sunday evening in 1879, when 67 people were drowned), I recollect a Mr. Saunders, a saddler at Broughty Ferry, in the immediate neighbourhood, possessed and showed me as a curio one of these identical portrait-taking machines.”

CHAPTER V.
PROCESSES.
(3) Freehand Scissor-work.

In the foregoing accounts of black profile painting, the cutting out of a sketched outline obtained by shadowgraphy or any other means, little mention has been made of the freehand scissor artist, who, without pencil or pen sketch, cut a small likeness after studying the sitter for a few seconds.

Though there were many other processes which gave charming and artistic results, there is no doubt that from the dated convent work of 1708 and the first known record in England of Mrs. Pyburg, who cut the portraits of William and Mary, up to the few remaining cutters of the present day, this type of freehand scissor-work has persisted in England, and also in Germany.

Some of the early cut-work examples were made with the assistance of fine small-bladed knives. Specimens of cut vellum exist, which it would have been impossible to cut with scissors alone. A notably fine example is in the Francisco-Carolinum Museum at Linz; it is an Ex Voto offering, and represents the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. The parchment mount has the most elaborate tendrils cut out, while typically German flourishes and mantling support birds and beasts. A stag-hunt is seen in one part, while the imperial eagle is not wanting in this skilful production. The picture is dated 1708.

In the same museum is a magnificent Dedication to the State Deputation of the Province of Nymwegen. Justice is surrounded by angels and trophies, painted and gilded, and the arms of the province are cut with much delicacy, and with richly foliated ornament. The whole is mounted on red, and dated 1710, but the artist wielder of the penknife unfortunately does not sign his work.

It is possible that these examples were convent-made. The cutting out of religious subjects and the extreme elaboration of their ornamental borders flourished, to a small extent, for some years after the printing press had destroyed the occupation of the monks in copying and illuminating manuscripts. A reproduction of one of these is now before us. It represents St. Benedict seated in the habit of a monk; a cross, skull, and other symbols are on the rocks at his side; the saint has a halo. A large tree is in the background, and birds and a squirrel are amongst the branches; two steps lead down to a sylvan scene, where the saint is seen walking away in the distance. Conventionalised roses, cornucopia, and floriated forms compose the wide border; this is all cut on the same piece of vellum, but there is no colour used. Another convent-made cut picture, which was exhibited at the Brünn Exhibition, shows a picture of the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan; it is signed “F. Agathaugdus, Bonnensis Capuchin.” In this picture, which is of paper, not vellum, the arms of a bishop appear, together with the inscription, “Johanni Ernesto, S.R.I., Principi Metropolitanæ Eccl., Salisbury.”

An achievement of arms seems to have been a favourite subject for such pieces. A remarkable specimen in cut paper, mounted on looking-glass, is in the collection of Lady Dorothy Nevill. It displays the arms, supporters, and motto of Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, the ancestor of Lady Dorothy. These examples are very difficult to find; it is probable that many have been destroyed.

SILHOUETTE PORTRAITS OF MEMBERS OF THE ANSLEY FAMILY

Painted in black and orange-red on convex glass. Dated 1793. Signed by W. Spornberg

In the possession of Lady Sackville, Knole

Another example, in the possession of the author, shows a heraldic escutcheon, with wolf and hound supporter, etc. This lies between two sheets of glass. The minuteness of the cutting of this fine paper is extraordinary.

A very fine specimen has a miniature of Charles I. In the centre an elaborate mount is cut out of thin paper; the whole is in a fine tortoiseshell frame of the period. This type of work is rare.

Little mention is made of freehand paper or vellum cutting in the early written treatises, probably because, needing only talent for catching a likeness and skill in wielding the scissors, there was little to be said about it; so that the early writers on the black profile work turned their attention to the less gifted workers who needed their help with extraneous and complicated processes.

Of all those who cut the likeness direct after glancing at the sitter, the Frenchman, August Edouart, was undoubtedly the most skilful and prolific. He styles himself “Silhouettist to the French Royal Family. Patronised by His Royal Highness the late Duke of Gloucester and the principal nobility of England, Scotland, and Ireland.” When he first came to England as a refugee, he seems to have supported himself by a strange industry, invented by himself, which he calls mosaic hair-work. In the descriptive catalogue which is before us, of an exhibition of this work held about 1826, such items appear as a wolf’s head; a squirrel, made with real hair, climbing a tree; a marine view with a man-of-war.

“This performance in human hair imitates the finest true engraving; the curious may perceive, with the help of a magnifying glass, the cordage and men on board. This work has taken at least twelve months in its execution.” When he made hair portraits of men, women, or animals, he used their own natural hair, “raising them from the ivory and making bas-reliefs.”

“These works,” writes Edouart, “being of my own invention and execution, I have desisted from making for the last twelve years, since the death of my royal and distinguished patrons, Queen Charlotte, the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, and others.”

It is strange that Edouart never combined hair-work with shadow portraiture, as did some of the German exponents. Being so expert a hair artist, it would have been natural to expect some examples of this rare combination; none, however, have as yet come before the author, though, knowing Edouart was an expert in both crafts, such examples have been sought.

Edouart wrote a treatise on “Silhouette Likenesses,” a book which is now very rare. It was published by Longman & Co., Paternoster Row, in 1835, and is illustrated with eighteen full-page plates, and it is characteristic of the man that the first is a portrait of himself; others are of celebrated personages of the day, and there are also several genre pictures executed with considerable skill. It is in portraiture, however, that his unrivalled skill has placed him high above all other workers in black paper cutting.

He describes his discovery of his talent for likeness cutting at some length. At the end of 1825 he was shown black shades which had been taken with a patent machine, and condemned them as unlike the originals. He was challenged to do them as well. “I replied that my finding a fault was not a reason that I could do better, and that I had never even dreamed of taking likenesses .... I then took a pair of scissors, I tore the cover off a letter that lay on the table; I took the old father by the arm and led him to a chair, that I placed in a proper manner, so as to see his profile, then in an instant I produced the likeness. The paper being white, I took the black snuffers and rubbed it on with my fingers; this likeness and preparation, made so quickly, as if by inspiration, was at once approved of, and found so like that the ladies changed their teasing and ironical tone to praises, and begged me to take their mothers’ likeness, which I did with the same facility and exactness.”

There is much long-winded explanation in this egotistical and somewhat priggish style, but delightful sidelights are thrown on the adventures of a silhouettist in the performance of his craft, of the status of the artist, his contempt of all methods except his own, and the naïve devices used for gaining advertisement. As these have no place in the present chapter, they will be found elsewhere under “August Edouart and his Book.”

Edouart nearly always cut the full-length figure. Amongst some thousands of his portraits which have been examined, only about fifty of bust size have been discovered.

“The figure adds materially to the effect that produces a likeness, and combines with the outline of the face to render, as it were, a double likeness in the same subject. From this combination of face and figure arises the pleasing and not less surprising result of a striking resemblance. The many thousands I have taken of the full-length enable me confidently to make this assertion.”

He argues that, in catching a likeness, attitude and demeanour are as important as the features of the face and contours of the head. The silhouette is the representation of a shade, he says, and if it be not critically exact, the principal part of its merit is lost.

He considers that the grouping of several figures makes the emphasising of a likeness in any one of the figures more noticeable, the difference existing between individuals, whether in height, gesture, or attitude, being a great advantage to the artist in giving point to the likeness.

He also lays great stress on the proportions in the figure of the sitter, which can be shown only in the full-length. Some have a long body and small legs, others long legs and a short body; in fact, everything in nature varies, and all these variations help to make the portrait of the individual, and not the features alone. Beauty, he continues, has respect to form. Now, one part of a figure may exhibit a beautiful form, and yet that figure may not be well proportioned throughout. For instance, a man may have a handsome leg, or arm, considered in itself, but the other parts of his figure may not equal this part in beauty, or this part may not be accurately proportioned to the rest of the figure; and so on through many pages, in which Edouart proves to his own satisfaction that, in order to give a correct shade likeness of a person, it is necessary to portray the whole and not one part only of that person. He goes further, and maintains that, as the manner of dress is often as characteristic as the gait, what is most usual for the sitter to wear should be depicted.

Edouart’s portraits are to be found in many parts of the British Isles and the United States of America, for his custom was to take up his abode in a town, to advertise in the papers, and to stay there while he took the silhouette portraits of the surrounding gentry and noblemen. Quite early in his career, his albums of duplicates contained 50,000 (the late Mr. Andrew Tuer computes them at 100,000) portraits, so that his whole output must have been enormous. He seems to have worked with great method, keeping a note of “the names of the persons I take, and the dates. These are written five times over—first, on the duplicate of the likeness; secondly, in my day book; thirdly, in the book in which I preserve them; fourthly, in the index of that book; and fifthly, in the general index. Without this arrangement, how could I at a minute’s notice tell whether I had taken the likeness of any person enquired for, and could it be otherwise possible to produce the silhouette, or to know from about 50 books, folio size, and above 50,000 likenesses, if I had taken the one required?”

The value of such method and classification, when some of these long-lost volumes came to the writer for identification, can be imagined. The story of the romance of the lost folios is too long a one to include in a general chapter on silhouette cutters and their work. It will appear in its place elsewhere, together with a notice of some of the extraordinarily interesting groups of famous people, especially those of the United States, where presidents and senators, public officials, professional men, famous characters, their wives and children, appear in startling sequence, crowded with order and method on to the pages of the numerous large volumes.

It was when on his way home from the American continent that Edouart met with that misfortune which so preyed upon his mind that he died in a short time. The ship “Oneida,” on which he travelled, was wrecked off the coast of Guernsey, and a large portion of Edouart’s collection was lost, together with much personal luggage, and a good deal of the cargo of cotton from Maryland. He died near Calais in 1861.

The very clever freehand scissor pictures of Paul Konewka are justly famous. Like Edouart, he was of the nineteenth century. Born in 1840, he was the son of a university official in Greifswald. After a public school education, he studied under Menzel, for whose influence he was ever grateful. He dedicated his Falstaff and his Companions to him while his master lay dying.

During his travels through Germany, Konewka cut a very large number of portraits which are now treasured in the possession of private owners. The actress, Anna Klenk, served as a model for many of his very beautiful figures.

While in Tübingen, at the Clinical Institute, he used quietly to cut the portraits of many of the listeners, and the professor who was lecturing as well. Such was his skill that he did his work by touch alone under the table. He was introduced to a general in Berlin, who flattered him, but called his gift dangerous. Konewka immediately handed him his own likeness, cut out of the lining of his dress-coat at the back while the general addressed him. Surely the same might be said of Konewka as was said of Runge, “the scissors have become nothing less than a lengthening of my fingers.”

It is as a book illustrator that Konewka is best known to the world. Besides the Falstaff and his Companions dedicated to Paul Heyse, illustrations for Midsummer Night’s Dream and twelve sheets for Goëthe’s Faust, children’s picture books, loose sheets, and many other illustrations, were cut by him. Konewka died in Berlin in 1871, his last silhouette being that of a dying trooper to illustrate the German song, “O Strasburg du wunderschœn Stadt.”

No less gifted in the art of scissor-cutting was Karl Fröhlich, once a compositor. His skill was chiefly directed towards little genre pictures of children plucking flowers, winged cupids, old men and women drinking coffee, and much fine landscape work. Unlike Konewka, he never cut wood blocks, so that his work has not been accessible for publication.

P. Packeny was an enthusiastic amateur, who worked in Vienna from 1846. He cut landscapes and genre pictures, but unfortunately did not confine himself to black and white effects, so that much of his work is spoilt by the use of brightly coloured papers.

Runge, the German artist, it is said, learnt silhouette cutting by watching his sister at her embroidery. In 1806 he sent some marvellously cut-out flowers to Goëthe. The poet was so charmed with them that he declared he would decorate a whole room with Runge’s work; this was never done. The artist wrote early in his career: “If chance had put a pencil instead of scissors into my hand, I would draw you all, so plainly do I see you.” Herr Julius Leisching agrees with Lichtwark that the cutting out of silhouettes had great influence on Runge’s pictures. Runge’s studies of plants with scissors and paper have been privately published. He cut out while out walking; saw and cut nature down to the roots.

One of the most remarkable of the paper cutters of the early nineteenth century was Hubard, who seems to have been the inevitable infant prodigy of the craft. He began his freehand scissor-work in portraiture and landscape at the early age of thirteen. The handbill which lies before us advertises his art as “Papyrolomia”—a terrible word, which doubtless had its uses in whetting the appetite of the public by mystifying them and suggesting terrifying adventures. This leaflet is illustrated with a grotesque figure, which has obviously been some of the printer’s stock-in-trade, for it is hardly germane to the subject of silhouette cutting, nor could it be the portrait of a scissor-worker of such tender years as Master Hubard, though this artist is only a secondary attraction in the show. The handbill runs thus:—

Facing the George Hotel, Galway.

Entrance, 376, High Street.

The Papyrolomia of the celebrated Master Hubard.

Little John, the Muffin Man.

[Then follows the rough wood block representing a grotesque figure.]

Collection of accurate Delineations of Flowers, Trees, Perspective Views, Architectural, Military, Sporting Pieces, Family Groups, Portraits of Distinguished Individuals, etc., Elegantly Mounted Pictures and Backgrounds, by W. G. Wall, Esqre., Dublin, together with 7 grand Oriental Paintings of the most celebrated views of North America, taken on the spot by eminent British artists.

Admission 1/-.

For which money each visitor is to receive a correct Likeness in Bust, cut in 20 seconds, without drawing or machine, by sight alone, and simply with a pair of scissors, by a boy of 14. Those who are averse to sitting for the Likeness are presented with some small specimen of the youthful artist’s talents.

Likenesses both in ink and in colours.

Style from 7s. 6d. up, by artists. Frames in Gilt.

Visitors are enabled to return to the Gallery by introducing a Stranger.

Open from 10 till Dusk.

This device with regard to a return visit to the gallery was probably highly successful, and adopted by Master Hubard on his visit to the United States about 1833. He was seventeen years of age when he went to America and established a Hubard Gallery in New York, where for fifty cents he cut the portraits of many well-known people. His gallery was thronged. His pictures are usually full-length portraits, and are pasted on card, having “Hubard Gallery” embossed in the left-hand corner. The example before us shows a handsome man with frock-coat and high stock collar. Though most of his work was done with scissors, Hubard also worked in Indian ink, and sometimes used gold pencilling to heighten the effect. An interesting example of his work is the portrait of little Princess Victoria, when about ten years of age. This was doubtless cut at Kensington Palace; possibly the little maid would be allowed to visit the gallery, or Hubard may have been summoned to the palace, as Edouart was to Holyrood.

J. Gapp was another early Victorian profile cutter, whose skill with the scissors is markedly in advance of his artistic sense. In his advertisement of about the year 1829, at the back of a boy’s full-length in Eton suit and aggressively large white collar, he describes himself as “The original Profilist for cutting accurate Likenesses attends daily at the Third Tower in the centre of the Chain Pier (Brighton), and begs to observe that he has no connection with any other person, and that he continues to produce the most wonderful Likenesses, in which the expression and peculiarity of character are brought into action in a very superior style on the following terms:—Full-length likenesses at 2s. 6d. each, two of the same 4s., or in bronze 4s.; profile to the bust 1s., two of the same 1s. 6d., or in bronze 2s. Ladies and gentlemen on horseback 7s. 6d.; single horses 5s.; dogs 1s. 6d. N.B.—A variety of interesting small cuttings for Ladies’ Scrap-books.”

Here we have a clue to the great scrap-book mania of the day. Everyone, from royalty downwards, collected treasures to paste in scrap-books, and Gapp, of the Chain Pier, like Hubard, was clever enough to offer to supply the want of interesting items.

E. Haines, patronised by the Royal Family, also worked on the Chain Pier at Brighton, at “the first left-hand tower.” He describes himself as a “Profilist and Scissorgraphist.” His trade label is on the back of a fine full-length portrait of a man, once in the collection of Mr. Montague J. Guest. There is great vigour and character in Haines’ work; the specimen before us is untouched with gold.

G. Atkinson (1815) also describes himself as “Silhouettist to the Royal Family.” He lived at Windsor, and there are some fine portraits of George III. and his sons, which, though stilted and without imagination, show considerable skill in the cutting. A group cut out in black and touched with gold was exhibited by G. Sharland, Esq., at the Royal Amateur Art Society’s Exhibition in 1911.

Though there are many other scissor-workers who might be mentioned, and examples described of graceful women in hooped skirts and fascinating side ringlets, maidens in cottage bonnets, and dainty children whose ringing voices one can almost hear as the shadow pageant passes, yet sufficient examples have been mentioned to show how popular was the craze for black portrait cutting, and how large a branch it was of the black profile processes.

That silhouettes are kept in the reference library of our National Portrait Gallery, because, on account of their life-like resemblance, they are of great value to the authorities in the identification of unknown portraits, is a fact which speaks for the great historic value of these pictorial records. In the cuttings of Edouart there is the ego of the man or woman as well as the bodily form. A gesture, the poise of the body, the arrested movement of the limbs, are shown with more than photographic correctness—when photography was as yet unborn. In the picture of a blind man we see by the tilt of the chin, the angle of the head, that, like all so afflicted, the man is exercising senses which are dormant in those who have sight. The simple black outline of the American deaf and dumb poet Nack, by this master-cutter, is instinct with the patient silence of the dumb, the aloofness of the deaf. Fine oil paintings and miniatures give us a man or woman interpreted through the senses of the artist and idealised or distorted through the alchemy of the artist’s mind. The shadow portrait is nature herself, and its very simplicity of line imposes a keener effect on the mind of the student, because there are no contours to confuse the outline.

CHAPTER VI.
AUGUST EDOUART AND HIS BOOK.

The introduction of the name Silhouette into England seems to have been due to August Edouart, a Frenchman, who, though only commencing the black portrait cutting after leaving his own country, used the French word for his craft instead of the black shade, which had hitherto been the name in England for such profile portraits.

“How many times,” writes Edouart, in the chapter in his treatise which he naïvely calls “The Grievances and Miseries of Artists,” “have I had people who, immediately after entering my room, departed, exclaiming, ‘Oh! they are all black shades,’ and would not stop to inspect them.”

“The name silhouette, which appeared in the newspaper advertisements, seems to have given them to understand that it was a new kind of likeness done in colours, each of which (full-length figure) they expected to get for five shillings.”

Again, on another page, he exclaims, “Why does such prejudice exist against black shades, which I call silhouette likenesses?” Certainly none of the early shadow portrait painters on paper, glass, or plaster ever used this name, taken from the French Finance Minister. It was not used in England until after the commencement of Edouart’s work and the publication of his book. By this time, it must be remembered, black profile portraiture had deteriorated in beauty, and the artists who frequented fairs and places of amusement were less skilled, indeed, than the Miers, Fields, Beethams, and Rosenbergs of the eighteenth century.

“Obliged to quit my country in consequence of a change in its Government,” Edouart, the most prolific and important of all the scissor-men, describes himself as “thrown upon foreign ground, without friends and without knowledge of the language. I had then very little money left, for I had lost all I possessed in the evacuation of Holland in 1813. A few months after my arrival in England, I found myself, after payment of all my travelling expenses, in possession of no more than a five-pound note, which I immediately expended in advertising myself as a French teacher.”

Succeeding in this at first, the arrival of so many other Frenchmen after a time reduced his work, and Edouart sought other means of livelihood. He began to make devices, landscapes, etc., with human hair, though what led him to this quaint handicraft, or what previous training he had in it, we have not been able to discover.

After receiving the patronage of Her Royal Highness the late Duchess of York, and making the portraits of some of her dogs with the animals’ own hair, he worked for the Queen and Princess Charlotte. Edouart, whose industry seems always to have been remarkable, executed over fifty of these strange hair portraits, and held an exhibition, the catalogue of which lies before us.

In 1825, Madame Edouart died, and August was persuaded to try his hand at likeness cutting in order to better the performance of some machine artist, whose work he had condemned. Finding, much to his surprise, that he was able to produce likenesses with extraordinary facility and exactness, he was persuaded by his friends to employ his time in this way, “so as to divert the gloom from my sinking mind, and alleviate my sorrows.” It seems probable also that his new talent was useful in filling his much depleted purse.

After many expressions of reluctance that he, August Edouart, should be cut by society and become a black profile taker, he decided to make an art of what had been so long considered a mere mechanical process, for Edouart never seems to have heard of black painted profiles and the exquisite work of the early profile painters, but only the machine-made pictures by the itinerant workers.

The first full-length that Edouart took was of the Bishop of Bangor, Dr. Magendie. “I succeeded so well,” he says in his introduction, “that I took all his lordship’s family; and so pleased were they that I made forty duplicates. This début, being so far above my expectation, encouraged me to continue, and from that time, being much engaged by the first visitors of Cheltenham, I took a resolution to keep a copy of every one to form a collection.”

“This talent,” he continues, “showed itself so strongly, and I was so anxious, that I worked from morning till night, and even in my dreams my brain was so much overheated by that anxiety, that in those dreams I was cutting likenesses of great personages, kings, queens, etc.”

His method of holding the scissors was unusual. The reason for this peculiarity is thus described: “One day, when crossing a stile, a lady tore her dress by a nail which was put on the step mischievously. To prevent the recurrence, I took a stone to take the nail away: in the act of doing so my index finger was lacerated in such a manner that I could not use my scissors. I suffered a great deal for several days, and my mind being so much excited about it, I dreamt that I cut likenesses without using the index finger. I was so much struck by this that, as soon as I awoke, I took my scissors and have ever since used them in that manner.” In an old daguerrotype he is seen cutting a portrait in this manner.

In his treatise Edouart gives no detailed account of his journeys, though he notes that he has always kept a diary.

From newspaper advertisements we learn that he was in Cheltenham in June, 1829, where he is described in the Cheltenham Journal as assisting in Lavater’s system with regard to Physiognomy. At this stage the old idea that silhouette portraits must have a scientific use still clung to the craft.

In 1830 Edouart is in Edinburgh. In the Scotsman of February 13th the collection of ingenious works executed by Monsieur Edouart is mentioned. “This may be seen gratuitously at 72, Princes Street. Mr. Edouart makes silhouette likenesses, not only of the profile, but also of the whole person, by cutting them by the hand, out of black paper.” The account ends thus: “In his rooms the curious will find amusement and the philosophic employment.” The cannie Scotsman would attract the “unco’ guid” with learning and occupation as well as the frivolous with amusement.

On May 8th of the same year the Edinburgh Evening Courant takes notice of Edouart’s success in his likenesses of Sir Walter Scott (this portrait of Scott was recently purchased by the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, on account of its fine technique and the human and life-like attitude of the great novelist), the Dean of Faculty, and other distinguished characters of the city, and slyly regrets that Edouart departs so soon.

The clever hint at departure evidently had the desired effect, for in the following February, 1831, Edouart is still at Edinburgh, “his rooms thronged with visitors since his threatened departure. Six hundred likenesses in a fortnight, and declining to take new ones till the orders given by the first families are executed.” Five thousand duplicates are now on view, and his books are exhibited at Holyrood Palace, where they are much approved of by the Royal Family.

It was at the end of 1830 that Charles X., ex-king of France, and suite, arrived at Holyrood, and though Edouart acknowledges “a feeling of ill-will towards the Bourbon family is still lingering in my bosom, remembering—as I did—the losses I suffered in consequence of their restoration to the throne of France,” he attended, when requested in person by the Duchesse de Berri. He found “His Majesty pacing up and down, and the Duchesse presented me, reminding the King that I was a Frenchman. He seemed pleased and affable.”

The whole Royal Family, attended by the suite, nearly forty in number, formed a circle, in the centre of which Edouart cut his first paper portrait of Charles X. “By mistake,” he says, “I took paper of four folds, in place of one of two, and, as I had begun, so I cut out the likeness. As soon as I had finished it the little Prince (the Duke of Bordeaux) took one, Mademoiselle, his sister, took another, the Duchesse de Berri another.”

Edouart cut the likenesses that evening of the Duke d’Angoulême, the Duchesse d’Angoulême, the Duchesse de Berri, Mademoiselle Louise Marie, the Duke de Bordeaux, the Cardinal de Latil, and many of the suite. After this Edouart declares that he “was a daily visitor at Holyrood, and my exhibition was often honoured by Royalty.” The Duke de Bordeaux declared that if Edouart would become one of his suite, he should be called the Black Knight.

Two of the Holyrood portraits by Edouart were exhibited at the Amateur Art Society’s Exhibition in 1902, by Miss Head. They were thus described in the Catalogue:—

“119. Duchesse de Berri and her children (Henry V. and the Duchesse de Parma) at Holyrood, by Edouart.”

“120. Henry V. and the Duchesse de Parma as children at Holyrood.”

In the recently discovered folios which belonged to Edouart himself, and which serve as an invaluable record of the entourage of Charles X. at Holyrood, very many of these likenesses appear; most of them have the original autograph of the sitter. From the wonderfully interesting groups of shadows we see the vie intime of the exiled king. He is surrounded by his children, his chamberlains and equerries, intimate friends, physicians (for body and soul). Even L’Abbé Focart, Confesseur du Roi, figures amongst them; and visitors to Holyrood, such as the Baron de Size and the Baron de Sepmanville, are included; besides the dogs and horses, the ponies of the children, and the toys and playthings with which they amused themselves in those days of exile.

Even when such success rewarded the efforts of Edouart, he is still in apologetic mood with regard to his art, and declares that if his work had not been good the French Royal Family would not have encouraged it. “They had seen a great quantity of those common (machine-made) black shades in Paris, and had also a great dislike to them, which was soon removed when they saw the nature of mine.” He is never able to refrain from a sneer at the other silhouettists.

In December, 1831, the Glasgow Free Press declares that “Monsieur E.’s rooms need only to be known to become a fashionable resort for lovers of the fine arts.” The hair models seem to have formed part of the exhibition.

In October, 1832, Edouart is still in Glasgow, and his likenesses now number 45,000, including the Orphan Asylum and all its managers, the directors of the Commercial Bank, and several others. In London he took 800 members of the Stock Exchange, of which he sold several books.

PORTRAIT OF LORD MANSFIELD

Painted on glass by A. Forberger, Paris

Edouart seems to have moved on to Dublin in 1833, but we doubt if he was pleased when the Dublin Evening Mail of July 24th describes him as “the most comical and at the same time the cleverest artist from Paris. His art gives the scissors all the expressive powers of the pencil, and extracts from a single tint of black the miraculous effects of a whole rainbow of colours.”

Edouart is by now cutting out genre pictures, and subjects from “Æsop’s Fables” are mentioned, while the portraits increase rapidly in number, 6,000 being taken in Dublin alone. The Archbishop of Dublin and a great number of clergy and the officers of the garrison head the list. In his exhibition he shows, amongst thousands of others, His Royal Highness the late Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Duke of Wellington; the Bishops of Norwich, Bangor, St. Davids, and Bristol; Doctors Chalmers and Gordon; Edward Irving, Charles Simeon, Rowland Hill, Joseph Wolfe, Jabez Bunting, Sir Walter Scott, Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Opie (herself a silhouettist), Kean, Liston, Power, Sir Astley Cooper, Baron Rothschild, etc.

In August, 1834, Edouart went to Cork. Later he visited Kinsale, Fermoy, Mallow, Limerick, and many other places. Paganini’s portrait was taken at Edinburgh in October, 1832, where Edouart went, travelling from Glasgow on purpose to obtain it. Signor Paganini declared it was the first likeness of himself which was not caricatured. This full-length portrait shows the maestro standing, violin in hand, just ready to begin. In the background are lithograph portraits of the members of an orchestra: they are seated in a domed music-room.

It was in 1835 that Edouart’s book was published. We presume it had been written during the time of his prodigious activities in silhouette cutting while he moved from place to place and conducted his exhibition. It is a thin demy octavo volume of 122 pages, now extremely rare. The copy in the possession of the author was presented to Miss C. J. Hutchings by Edouart at Cheltenham, August 25th, 1836. There are eighteen full-page plates, showing black portraits or fancy figures mounted on lithograph backgrounds, by Unkles & Klasen, 26, South Mall, Cork. In the original volumes of duplicates kept by Edouart many of these mounts were found, as the silhouettist doubtless kept a number by him ready for mounting his portraits.

In a chapter headed “The Vexations and Slights my Profession has brought upon me,” Edouart deplores “the vulgarity into which silhouettes have fallen, so that I could not walk in public with a lady on my arm without hearing such remarks as this, ‘Who can she be—that lady with the black shade man?’ The same disposition to cast odium on me was displayed whenever I was seen walking arm-in-arm with friends who moved in circles of high life. It went so far that, being in the habit of walking at the Wells of Cheltenham, and accustomed to go to the balls at the Rotunda, I was forced to deprive myself of the pleasure of being with my friends in these places. On different occasions several persons of high rank in society accused me of being somewhat proud,” and so on through many pages.

On one occasion his greeting was of the most cordial description, owing to an amusing mistake. “A friend having given a recommendatory letter to a particular friend in town, I was received in a better manner than ever I was received since I began taking black shades. As my friend would not recommend me to a suitable lodging, we went to the editor of a newspaper, to whom he spoke, and then presented me to him. Upon this we all went to the governor of the castle, who had a house to let in the town. The governor willingly consented to let me have the house, though he feared the boards might not be strong enough for the exercise of my profession, and the quantity of people it would be likely to attract; indeed, it would be advisable to practise on the ground floor, that the noise and bustle would not be so great, and the like....

“The governor, who had been a military man, asked me very good-humouredly if it were not trespassing on my goodness to allow him to take a round with me, saying that he had taken lessons, and took off his coat. I declared that I had not brought my tools with me.” The scene is described in several pages, and shows how the governor offers eventually to lend gloves, when it dawns upon the profilist that the letter has been misread, and the sports around him imagine he is a pugilist.

Edouart seems to have suffered much at the hands of his sitters.

“But, Monsieur Edouart,” says one of these, “you have taken John, who is a head taller than his brother William, a great deal smaller. How can that be? It is a mistake of yours; you must correct that.”

“You must know, madam,” replies the silhouettist, “that it is according to the rule of perspective. Do you not see that John is at least six yards farther in the background than his brother?”

“Yes! but his is cut smaller,” persists the aggrieved parent.

Gentlemen demanding ladies’ profiles were refused by this veritable Mrs. Grundy of silhouettists. His refusal is given in language worthy of the Fairchild family.

“Ladies are never exhibited, nor duplicates of their likenesses either sold or delivered to anyone but themselves or by their special order. This resolution I have taken, and I follow it very strictly, being fully aware of the consequence that would result if this measure was not adopted. Gentlemen presume that they are entitled to possess the likenesses of any ladies they like. But no—no—they cannot deceive me by false pretences. I am too much upon my guard to be surprised. The books in which I keep duplicates are all defended with a patent lock.”

Monsieur Edouart rivals the serpent in wiliness when a lady’s portrait is so desired and the gentleman offers the address where it should be sent. The artist says, “I do not require to know your direction, gentlemen. I know that of the lady, to whom I shall send it, and she herself will deliver it to you.” We should imagine that, under those conditions, orders were usually cancelled.

“Some make themselves pass for relations,” adds Edouart, who is not without a sense of humour, though he does take himself so seriously, “as a brother, cousin, uncle, etc., but all this is in vain.”

Edouart seems to have used special means of his own to extract payment of debts, and his illustration “The Screw” shows in what manner his clients were brought to book. The episode is described at great length in his book, but unfortunately the name of the sitter for “The Screw” is withheld. Briefly, a young man had his portrait cut, approved of the likeness, but regretted, after seeing a picture of a friend in a dress-coat, that he had not also worn that kind. In a very rude manner he said he would not pay for the completed likeness until another was done in a dress-coat. Edouart said he must be paid for both. This the man refused, so the artist refused to cut the second picture and was left with the portrait on his hands. To cut the screw and add the ring and hook was the work of a few moments, and the picture was then exhibited in a conspicuous position in the window, where everyone recognised it. “Since that time, I have not had occasion to make a screw,” adds Edouart, naïvely.

The subject of caricature in silhouette is a very interesting one, but cannot be fully treated here. There are few examples, and it is strange that so virile and graphic an art as that of the silhouette should show so few specimens of caricature work.

In August Edouart’s work just such aptitude for seizing the salient feature in face or figure is invariably shown which is the quality most required by the caricaturist, but Edouart never allows his scissors to swerve from faithful and exact portrayal; no note of exaggeration is seen even when executing the fine studies, such as his beggar and itinerant groups in the streets of Bath or Cheltenham.

In the figure of George Cary, porter at Price’s auction rooms, Bath, taken April 4th, 1827, there is no exaggeration. The man appears balancing two fine candlesticks on a small tray; the unerring likeness is self-evident. It is the same with the blind gingerbread-seller of Gay Street; the bill-sticker who is about to paste up one of Edouart’s own labels; John Hulbert, the old scavenger; and with several of the no less clever street characters of Bath. In these we see consummate skill in depicting the man or woman in life as they were, but with no sense of bias towards caricature.

Amongst the old letters recently discovered with the precious folios of Edouart’s duplicates is one from “S. H.,” dated Birmingham, June 1st, 1838:—

“My dear Friend,—On seeing your Exhibition, I was astonished at the application you must have bestowed on an art I had till then considered as useless. I found likenesses of unrivalled talent, not only accurate outlines, but giving the character of those whom they represented. Write to me from America. The Americans are known to encourage talent of every description, and I hope to see you return laden with the produce of your labours in that fresh and interesting country to the place you are now quitting.”

For how long Edouart had been contemplating his American tour we are not aware. In the year 1839 he was in Liverpool, working at his profession. In the same year he sailed for the United States, taking with him his volumes of English, Scotch, and Irish portraits for exhibition purposes.

He seems to have met with immediate success, and the volumes which contain his American portraits give so complete a pictorial record of the social and political history of the time (1839-1849) as probably no other nation possesses. During his first year three hundred and eighty-one portraits were taken in New York, Saratoga, Boston, and Philadelphia, amongst them being Mr. Belmont, who is entered as “August Belmont, Agent of the House of Rothschild, New York.” There are two portraits, 8½ inches in height, of this man, who was an important social and financial figure of the day, and founder of the Jockey Club of New York; congress-men, editors, journalists, and officers of the Army and Navy in uniform.

The wives and children of these interesting men are also included in the collection, and later, when he visited New Orleans and other States where slavery was permitted, we find occasionally a slave’s picture “belonging” to the family. As in his English collections, the names of his sitters, the date, and name of place where taken, and sometimes curious details such as height and weight, are all entered, not only beneath each portrait in the folio, but also at the back of the portrait itself; and also in his list-books newspaper cuttings are sometimes added. In 1840 five hundred and thirty-one portraits were taken in the same places, in Washington and Saratoga Springs. Major-General Winfield Scott (Commander-in-Chief) is amongst them.

The year 1841 was the time of the great Log Cabin election, and Harrison, the hero, is shown with two autographs in Edouart’s books, besides his whole Cabinet and the orators, demagogues, place-hunters, and abolitionists, who all seem to have visited the studio of the artist, whatever their political opinions. Seven hundred and sixty-five portraits were taken in this year at Washington and elsewhere.

After the tragic death of Harrison, John Tyler, the only man who was President without election, was taken by Edouart, and it gave the author great pleasure to present to the American nation his autographed silhouette. It was taken at the White House in 1841, and was returned there through Mr. Taft in June, 1911, after seventy years’ wandering. When arranging the presentation, His Excellency, James Bryce, our Ambassador in Washington, was much interested, because Edouart had visited his old home in the north of Ireland and cut the portraits of his father and grandfather, which are still preserved there, and are fine likenesses.

In 1842 Edouart travelled further afield, and made six hundred and forty-one pictures in New Orleans and other States he had not yet visited; in Cambridge he cut Longfellow, the Appleton family, the President of Harvard, and dozens of professors and students of the College.

In 1843 four hundred and sixty of the citizens of Philadelphia, New York, Saratoga Springs, Norwich (Conn.), Charlestown, and other towns too numerous to mention, were taken, named, dated, and placed in his folios. There are an interesting crowd of congress-men, senators, financial celebrities, actors, musicians, editors, men of science, and the members of the Army and Navy, mostly in uniform, including Macomb, then Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army.

In 1844 five hundred and eighty-nine portraits are extant from a dozen different cities, and then we come down to eight pictures taken in 1845, four only in 1846, and four only in the next three years.

The reason for this falling off in numbers is so extraordinary that we give it in continuing Edouart’s life-story. It is probable that the artist was just as industrious during the last five years of his tour in America as he had been in the first four, but his work is destroyed.

In December, 1849, he packed all his folios in great cases, and set out for home, sailing in the ship “Oneida,” laden with bales of Maryland cotton. When off the coast of Guernsey she was caught in a great gale, and was wrecked in Vazon Bay on December 21st. The crew and passengers were saved and some of the baggage; a case, containing fourteen of the precious folios, some old letters and list-books, was saved; all the rest was lost, with much of the cargo, when the ship broke up two days after she had gone on the rocks.

Edouart suffered much from exposure, for he was then an old man, and the loss of the greater part of his life’s work so preyed upon his mind that he never again practised his profession. The Lukis family, resident at Guernsey, hospitably entertained the old artist, and he gave his remaining volumes, fourteen in number, containing his European collection and his American portraits, to Frederica Lukis before he left for Guines, near Calais, where he died in 1861, in his seventy-third year.

The writer was fortunately enabled to secure these volumes through the medium of The Connoisseur Magazine, and has included illustrations from them in the present work.

CHAPTER VII.
SCRAP-BOOKS.
A Royal Cutter and her Work.

In the Georgian days the cutting of animals, landscapes, groups, and single profiles was the fashionable pastime of a large number of amateurs. Girl-friends cut for each other mementos in black paper or in white; these were then gummed on to a black or coloured ground. They vied with each other in cutting some clever little piece of scissor-work, which, for safe storage, would be placed in an album or scrap-book. Sometimes the little cutting is found gummed in amongst tiny steel engravings, some Bartolozzi tickets, a treasured sheet of music, or wreaths and scraps of faded flowers. The fragrance of such a collection does not lie only in the shrivelled rose or violet leaves; there is an aroma of sentiment, a reminder of those past days when everyone had leisure and the polite elegances of the little arts had full sway.

The cuttings usually show groups of children, reminding us of Buck’s work of contemporary date; or of animals, sometimes alone, and sometimes set in a landscape of such elaboration that one wonders how so great an effect can be packed into the two square inches of paper, which is often the size of the complete silhouette picture. It would be unusual to find so much and such accurate detail in a pen-and-ink drawing; the fact that the picture is cut out with a pair of scissors or a penknife makes it the more extraordinary.

Many professional portrait cutters also cut landscapes, animals, groups of flowers, and other trifles, notably Patience Wright, who accomplished much fine work of this kind, as well as her lovely portraits.

J. Gapp, who worked on the Chain Pier at Brighton, advertised pieces suitable for ladies’ scrap-books. At the end of his trade label are the following words:—“N.B.—A variety of interesting small cuttings for ladies’ scrap-books.” The label from which we take the words is on a full-length profile portrait of a boy in the old Eton School dress.

Much black shade cutting was done at the Court of George III., both in profile portraiture and also in fancy groups and landscapes. Queen Charlotte was an ardent collector, and delighted to have her own portrait taken in shadow, if we can judge by the very large number of pictures of this type which have come down to us. King George III. was no less enthusiastic, and must have sat to every profilist of the day, both professional and amateur. In most of these silhouette portraits the vitality is clearly seen in this “German Princelet of his day,” as Lord Rosebery’s inimitable description has it. The character of the Princelet is as plain to see as if the veritable embodiment of His Majesty were before us, and not alone his shadow picture.

We can imagine that the whole of the Court entourage would feel or assume an interest in the pastime beloved of the royal mistress, the king, and their artistic daughters, whose story one thinks of with mingled feelings of sympathy and interest. Their fair faces on the canvases of Gainsborough, Hoppner, and Beechey haunt us as they gaze from the walls of the royal residences. How each of the six girls must have thought of the suitors which were so long in coming! Their graceful and gracious young days sped away, only half filled by the mild excitements of Court life, with their embroidery, their pencil, brush, and scissor work, cutting the portrait of Fanny Burney, or admiring the family group of the Burney family, and imitating with their amateur scissor-work the elegant curtains and tassels of the professional cutter’s background. Perhaps they showed their efforts to Mrs. Delany, who was living so near to them at Windsor, and had herself been cut by a professional profilist with so great success—the dainty goffered cap with its becoming chin-strap, and a love-knot and wreath are beneath the picture. Did their parents dread the unstable glories of Continental courts for their girls in those revolutionary days? The prudent Queen Charlotte would shudder to think of a repetition of the disastrous Danish marriage of her husband’s young sister, and King George would try to shield his golden-haired girls from such a loveless match as that of his eldest sister, Augusta, to the Duke of Brunswick.

It was Princess Elizabeth, born May 22nd, 1770, whose artistic talents were most marked; she studied with her pencil and brush under various masters until she attained great proficiency. There is a charming portrait of her painted by Edridge, engraved in mezzotint by S. W. Reynolds, Engraver to the King. She is shown pencil in hand, her sketch-book on her knee; her turban, which would be of correct fashion for the present day, only half hides her fair curled hair. Her diaphanous gown is not specially becoming to her ample shape, already showing signs of the enormous proportions she afterwards attained. Fine octagon-shaped brooches adorn her sleeves and breast, a thin scarf is laid over her chair, and on the writing bureau is a work basket, flower vase, and inkstand.

The dedication of the picture runs thus: “Her Royal Highness the Landgravine of Hesse Homburg, dedicated by Permission to His Most Gracious Majesty, William IV., by His Majesty’s devoted Subject and Servant, Edward Harding, Librarian to Her Late Gracious Majesty Queen Charlotte, May 21st, 1830.” Published by E. Hardy, 13, Rochester Terrace, Pimlico.

It was long after irreverent courtiers had ceased to think of the princess as anything but a confirmed spinster that the Prince of Hesse Homburg, of whose person and manners the caustic Creevy paints a very unattractive picture, appeared on the scene, and considerable mirth greeted the news of her engagement at the mature age of 47. The fact that the princess was severely criticised by a censorious world for quitting her aged and dying mother, and that as Landgravine of Hesse Homburg her good qualities were displayed to great advantage, do not concern us here, where we are chiefly concerned in her industry and artistic talents. These were evidently more marked in her than in any other member of her family, and we have read that many of her silhouettes were engraved and published, but we have not been able to trace any of these reproductions.

That the small and very charming single figures or groups were frequently given as souvenirs is certain, for on a specimen we have examined there is an inscription, “H.R.H. Princess Elizabeth was pleased to give me (Lady Bankes) at Windsor, August 27th, 1811, where I had the honour of seeing her by chance.”

Lady Dorothy Nevill is the owner of a most interesting relic of this favourite pastime of a royal princess. It is the original scrap-book given by Princess Elizabeth to her friend, and is filled with every variety of cutting executed by the princess herself. The book is of dark blue morocco leather, 9 inches by 6 inches in size. On its silver lock and clasp is the initial of the royal donor, and between the pages are the little gem cuttings, a selection of which we are able to reproduce here. Many varieties of silhouette cutting are shown; none of the specimens are gummed into the book, or, if they have been, the mucilage has perished. Faint pencil notes head the pages, and the cuttings are placed separately between the leaves. Some of the groups are cut out in black paper; some, notably the shadow perforation type, are in white paper; and some are painted in Indian ink and then cut out. The groups of children playing are most animated; there is real movement in the baby toddling downstairs held by ribbon strings by its nurse.

The portraits of Queen Charlotte and King George III., the parents of the artist, are naturally of great interest. These have a note on the page in which they lie that they were taken in the year 1792. They are drawn in Indian ink, and not cut, and those who have had occasion to examine the profiles of the king and queen will at once see that Princess Elizabeth was proficient in catching a likeness. There are two other bust portraits of George III. in this interesting scrap-book, and a full-length picture in black profile, in which the stiff coat-tails and dangling court sword or rapier are admirably portrayed.

The cutting of the shadow perforation pictures seem to have been an agreeable variety in scissor-work. These strange silhouettes were so cut that, on holding a light at a particular angle behind the picture, a shadow was cast by it which resembled some special character or object group. Thus the head of Christ is thrown in shadow upon any white surface when the strange-looking mask is held up between the candle and the board; the child on the rocking-horse is arranged for the same effect, which thus reverses the shadow portraiture of long ago.

In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a large portfolio with examples of scissor-work and black portraiture. Amongst the specimens are many of the perforated shadow-throwing type, some well-known pictures being thus reproduced. They were bequeathed by the Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, and consist of shadow and silhouette pictures and portraits “done by C. H. Townshend and his family.” This donor also bequeathed many paintings to the Museum. Little groups, such as “A Child and a Goat,” “Children Playing,” “A Lady holding up a Child,” give glimpses into the domestic scenes it was considered pleasing to portray in silhouette. Some of these are done by Charlotte Townshend; some by other members of the family. There is no very great interest attaching to these amiable records of a bygone day.

“Copied by Mrs. Wigston from Lady Templetown’s designs” gives us an insight into the part played by those not sufficiently skilful to originate but who, by copying, could take their share in the fashionable pastime.

The late Andrew W. Tuer, who was keenly interested in the subject of silhouettes, wrote thus in Notes and Queries concerning silhouettes of children:—“Much should I like to know who designed and cut out in black paper a remarkably clever series of about eighty minute silhouettes of child life, mainly groups. They are loosely placed in a book of blank leaves bound in contemporary citron morocco, lettered on the front ‘M. G.’ To some the artist has written a verse, and to others a date—the earliest 1796, the latest 1806. Inferentially, the work is that of gentlefolk. Between two of the leaves is a piece of black paper, on the reverse or white side being written ‘J. Poulett, Twickenham, Middlesex,’ and on another piece of paper the name ‘Lucy’ is cut out in silhouette.”

Later Mr. Tuer wrote:—“From the Earl Poulett I gather that these interesting and clever silhouettes were probably the handiwork of the first wife, whose initials were A. L., of the fourth Earl Poulett, of Poulett Lodge, Twickenham. What the initials M. G. stand for his lordship does not know.

“Andrew W. Tuer.

“The Leadenhall Press, E.C.”

Though more a note-book than a scrap-book, an interesting relic of the laborious methods of Lavater must be mentioned here. This volume, which is one of the chief treasures of the Wellesley collection, is a small leather-bound book, in which the philosopher pasted the silhouette portraits of those persons whose heads he wished to measure, study, and compare with others in his collection, and then to pronounce judgment upon as to their mental and moral qualities. The fact that Goëthe was for a time enthusiastic with regard to Lavater’s work casts a glamour over the little book, with its many pictures and vast store of minutely written notes.

Another album, which is also in Mr. Wellesley’s collection, is most elaborate. Each page has a finely wrought border, in the centre of which is pasted the silhouette portrait of a friend; the male sex is largely in the majority, but a few women’s profiles are included. We cannot imagine a more charming souvenir of an interesting circle of friends than such a shadow pageant. Old comrades would be brought to remembrance through the extraordinarily vivid personal touch that the silhouette picture retains; friends almost forgotten seem to rise up in the memory as we handle their black profile portrait, for there is a direct appeal in outline, which is more profound than when contour blurs the recollection.

In examining such a collection, one cannot help being interested in the very great variety of wigs—no two are alike; long and short queues, large and small ribbons, coquettish curls, majestic rolls, are shown amongst the men’s profiles, till we are bewildered with the variety, and cease to wonder that all kinds of fanciful names were given by the beaux of the day to the special hair-dressing they affected.

No less remarkable is the head-dressing of the ladies, and the elaboration of the curls and coifs is only eclipsed by the intricacy of the flowers, feathers, bows of ribbon gauze and taffeta with which the great erections are garnished. Even when there is no gilt pencilling to throw up the detail, the effect is marvellously interesting; and, for this reason alone, the old black shadow collections make a very absorbing study.

An extraordinarily interesting collection of upwards of one hundred and fifty is in a narrow folio volume in paper cover, dated 1804. Religious processions and ceremonies, rural and domestic scenes and children’s games, are cut with the utmost delicacy and mounted on white paper. Here are a few of the subjects:—Carrying the Host to a sick person at Nice; Cleaning Shoes in Paris; Drinking the Waters at Wiesbaden; Gathering Apples near Paris; Sprinkling Clothes at Bergen; Procession on Palm Sunday; Procession of the Virgin Mary; Jewish Wedding; The Pope carried round St. Peter’s; A Fish-market; Wine-making; and a dozen other complicated scenes. All are depicted with wonderful accuracy. This important collection has now unfortunately left England.

Another interesting little scrap-book of yellow paper, bound in calf, contains the portraits of—the King (George III.); Edw. King, Esq.; Mrs. King; Mrs. Carter, the translator of Epictetus; Tiberius Cavallo, Esq.; Mrs. Fiere, mother of the Rt. Hon. S. H. Fiere; Baron Rechausen, Swedish Minister; Madame Rechausen; two favourites; Miss H. Randall; Warren Hastings, Esq., Governor-General of India; General Paoli. Some of these are in Indian ink, some in cut paper.

SILHOUETTE PORTRAIT OF A MAN

By A. Forberger, Paris. Signed and dated 1791

CHAPTER VIII.
SILHOUETTE DECORATION ON PORCELAIN AND GLASS.
THE SILHOUETTE THEATRE.

As the oldest type of black profile representation is undoubtedly connected with the decoration of pottery, it is not to be wondered at that when silhouette-making by brush, pencil, or scissors was at the height of its popularity, a return should be made in style to the antique. The porcelain and glass makers ornamented their work in silhouette, sometimes in the modern form, when the head and neck would be shown, generally in black upon white china, but also in a few instances in black upon a reddish terra-cotta colour, when the full figure would be given in the Greek style, and designs more or less elaborate would be used as borders, notably, the key pattern, so usually associated with Greek art, though, as a matter of fact, such patterns appear in all Oriental decoration. A Vienna factory, and also some of the French factories of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, made objects with the reddish ground. Silhouette porcelain was not infrequently made for private individuals, such, for example, as the specimen owned by Dr. A. Figdor, of Vienna. A female head painted in black is surrounded by a wreath of forget-me-nots in colour, and on the back is the inscription, “In remembrance of your affectionate grandmother, M. J. C.” A fine cup and saucer is in the collection at Carnavalet, in Paris; amongst those pieces which are associated with the Revolution, within a frame of olive or laurel, is the silhouette of Mirabeau, with the name printed below. There is a beautiful tray belonging to Mr. FitzHenry, of French manufacture. This shows the silhouette portrait at its best, in gold, as centre ornament. Wreaths of ribbon garlands and pierced ornament make this fine piece specially attractive. Besides these individual pieces, specially ordered for special occasions, there are the pieces of silhouette china ornamented with portraits of the king or of the reigning family. In Mr. Wellesley’s collection there is a mug with a portrait of George IV. rather coarsely done, and we have examined some custard cups with lids, which were also English. At the Worcester and Bristol factories such painting was done, though usually less elaborately than at some of the German porcelain factories. There is an exception, however, in the very fine vase shown in our illustration. This is in the possession of Mr. Spink, and was made at Worcester. It stands thirteen-and-a-half inches high, and its elaborate decoration in gold and colour is extremely effective. The wide band above the portrait is of chocolate colour, with pencillings of gold in a Greek design; blue, green, and brown figure on other parts of the vase, and the lid has a gold knob. The black profile of the king has a band round it, on which are the words, “Health and prosperity attend His Majesty.”

At Knole there are several beautiful Worcester vases with silhouettes of George III. and a remarkable breakfast service of German workmanship. This is complete, and gives the different portraits of the reigning royal family. Even more elaborate are two vases also connected with royalty; they were evidently made for centre-pieces when a special dinner service was used. There are no silhouette portraits on the plates and dishes, but on the two splendidly ornamental vases, which match in decoration, there are profiles of the King and Queen of Sweden respectively. These fine examples are in Copenhagen porcelain; swags of flowers in high relief show up well on the white ground. Cupids ornament the lids and hold as a shield gold-framed medallions, where, on a rose-coloured ground, the silhouettes show with excellent effect. These vases stand sixteen inches in height.

Amongst the German examples there is a good specimen from Wallenstein with a silhouette portrait of Frederick the Great in a frame of laurel picked out in gold. In the Höhenzollern Museum at Monbijou Castle there is a large service entirely decorated in this way. Teapots and cream-jugs, basins, sugar and slop bowls, and coffee-cups, all are complete, and six female and three male heads appear, all being members of the Royal Family. Frederick the Great is on the coffee-pot.

Undoubtedly such ware was made for presentation. We can well imagine the special pleasure in a gift which has this very personal touch; the royal attribute of picture presentation must have been most acceptable when the useful service became the portrait background.

Not only did the silhouette cast its glamour over the porcelain makers, but glass manufacturers also utilized the fashion for the original decoration of their wares. Dr. Strauss, of Berlin, owns a remarkable glass with a well-cut shank, which shows the head and shoulders of a woman, with the inscription, “With best wishes for your welfare, your faithful wife presents you with this. L. W. V. R., August 6th, 1795.” The silhouette is in gold, and is done by means of a curious process practised by one Glomi, and called after him Églomisé, though the method was known and utilized long before his time; in fact, as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this etching in gold between glass was done. Fine specimens, usually cups, goblets, and chalices, for the use of the Church, enrich our museums. The process is thus described by Larousse in the Nouveau Dictionnaire:—

“Églomisé,”
art. Larousse, “Nouveau Dictionnaire,” Tom. 4.

Églomisé, ée. (de Glomi, n. pr.) adj.

Se dit d’un objet en verre décoré au moyen d’une dorure intérieure, suivant le procédé de l’encadreur Glomi, qui paraît en avoir été l’inventeur au XVIIIe siècle.

Encycl. Les verres églomisés sont ces petits tableaux dont le sujet est peint sur le verre même qui les recouvre. On fait un fréquent usage de ses petits panneaux ou de ces lentilles pour former des dessus de bonbonnières, etc. Ordinairement, le tracé est fait à la pointe, sur une feuille d’or fixée au vernis sur le verre. Le mot “églomisé” a été inventé, en 1825, par l’archéologue Carrand et appliqué par lui aussi bien aux verres modernes décorés suivant la méthode de Glomi qu’aux objets beaucoup plus anciens, datant du plus haut moyen âge, où la feuille d’or est soudée au feu entre deux pellicules de verre.

The work was done on one glass, and another was made to literally enclose the finely etched gold lines, so that no harm could come to the decoration. Delicate landscapes as well as figures and portrait busts are done, and the glass is found coloured as well as clear white. There is a fine example in the Imperial Austrian Museum at Vienna, in which the silhouette in gold of a man appears with the inscription, “P. Ferdinand Karl, Professi Hilariensis. Mildner fec. à Gullenbrunn, 1799.”

In the Glass Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and at the British Museum, there are very fine specimens. At the former there is a drinking glass specially worthy of note. It is of tumbler shape, 3½ inches by 2¾ inches, and is formed of two layers of glass, one of which is etched in gold leaf, with a group of St. George and the Dragon, foliated scrolls, festoons, and arabesques. The bottom is coloured red and etched in gold, with the sacred monogram I.H.S., and the legend, “Benedictine sit nomen Domini.” The outside is cut in facets. This example is German early eighteenth century.

Wonderfully vivid hunting scenes are shown in gold-silhouette on an example of sixteenth-century work owned by Mr. FitzHenry; while black silhouette work of Nuremberg manufacture is painted in black with flowers and sacred emblems. Besides the gold ornamented glass, there was also a good deal made in the same way but decorated in very dark brown or black. Hunting scenes, elaborately sketched with the minutest detail in tree, hound, and huntsman, often figure on such pieces.

A volume on the silhouette in all its aspects would be incomplete without some reference to the use which, from earliest times, has been made of shadowgraphy to represent isolated scenes, and also complete plays on the stage.

In Paris, in 1771, the celebrated Theatre Seraphin was founded by Seraphin Dominique François, who opened his little theatre for shadowgraphy alone, in the gardens at Versailles.

Slight and dainty were the plays, and we can imagine the silk-clad audience in powder and patches who would come with the children, or with no excuse at all, to amuse themselves at the antics performed in this shadowland. Little they cared for the real shadows of the terrible Revolution which were already gathering as they applauded the silhouettes of Seraphin.

“Venez garçons, venez fillettes,

Voir Momus à la silhouette.”

Twenty-six years later, after the stormy days of the Revolution, marionettes were added to the attraction of Chinese shadowgraphy, which still lingers in the magic-lantern shows of to-day.

For the palmy days of the silhouette theatre we must look a long way down the centuries, and the recent astounding find of a large collection of ancient figures used in the shadow plays of old Egypt enables us to actually see how the Egyptian figures looked and how they worked. The history of their discovery by Dr. Paul Kahle in one of the villages of the Delta is a fascinating one, too long for these pages, but the signs and proofs of antiquity are complete. The coats of arms of the Mamelukes used in the thirteenth century are used as ornaments, and the leather, of which the human figures, ships, and birds are made, is cleverly cut, so that a mosaic of richer colouring is visible.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there are renowned actors in the shadow theatre, and even as early as the eleventh century performances are mentioned. The stage was formed by a thin sheet, behind which there was a strong light, and the figures were moved with two sticks fastened in the middle of the back.

In Java legendary history is taught by means of itinerant silhouette shows. These figures are also of leather, from eighteen inches to two feet in height. They are moved by means of horn sticks; they were in existence before Mahometanism came to the island. In China silhouette plays always represent a priest of Buddha as the central figure, and he is made to dance in imitation of the movements made in the performance of religious rites.

On the night of the festival of Diwali in India men exhibit a huge cylindrical paper lantern, over the sides of which shadow figures pass in succession, so that Gonard’s lamp in the Palais Royal, that was decorated with silhouettes to guide his clients to his salon, might have come straight from the East.

Special plays for performance on the stage of the shadow theatre were published as late as 1850, written some years before by Brentano for the amusement of his family, for shadowgraphy was often practised in the middle-class houses.

Pocci also wrote a play for the shadow theatre, and Henri Rivière produced the “Prodigal Child” and the “March to the Star,” both shadow tableaux rather than plays, arranged in seven elaborate scenes.