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.