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.”
[Illustration: 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.