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.”