The history of silhouettes

by Emily Jackson

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.