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.
[Illustration: 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.