The history of silhouettes

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

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:—

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:—

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.

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.