Up to this point we have discussed only those processes which entail hand drawing with pen, pencil, or brush, which are undoubtedly an attractive type of the shadow picture, whether they are executed on ivory, plaster, or paper; their backing with wax, gold, or silver leaf tinsel, on coloured paper makes accidental varieties of the one type.
Any of these processes require a good deal of artistic training, even if the shade is used as a guide, for unless there is skill in catching a likeness, or delicacy and charm in drawing, black portraiture has nothing whatever to recommend it. However the silhouette is executed, the mechanical appliances play so important a part in nearly all the processes that they need a chapter to themselves. In order to popularise the black portrait, some means of achieving it was required which could be used by persons without talent or artistic training.
It was here that shadowgraphy came to the fore. Even the most ignorant in art work could trace a shadow when thrown upon white paper on a wall or specially made screen, and if the full life-size were considered too large, the Singe, pantograph, or other contrivance could reduce its size; then only scissors were required, and the silhouette-by-machinery maker felt himself to be as gifted as the black portrait painter, or the freehand scissor-cutter, whose work we describe in another chapter.
Etienne de Silhouette, born in 1709, amused himself with the craze of the day. His craft, belonging essentially to this section of mechanical execution, deserves special mention, not because he invented the black profile portrait, for they were made sixty years before he was born, but because his name was given to it in derision, and has stuck to it ever since. Being finance minister, he was supposed to be a promoter of the fine arts, but such was his economy, or meanness, that artists styled his paper pictures “portraits à la silhouette,” a name synonymous with paltry effort and cheapness. This did not, however, deter people from patronising the silhouette artists, nor of attempting, themselves, to achieve the machine-made variety of the fashionable black portrait.
In the Journal Officiel, published in Paris, August 29th, 1869, we read:—“Le Chateau de Berg sur Marne fut construit en 1759 par Etienne de Silhouette ... une des principales distractions de se seigneur consistait à tracer une ligne autour d’un visage, afin d’en avoir le profil dessiné sur le mur: plusieurs salles de son chateau avaient les murailles couvertes de ses sortes de dessins que l’on appelle des silhouettes du nom de leur auteur de nomination que est toujours resté.”
In the seventeenth century, dillettantism was an obsession with the leisured classes. The tendency of the time towards Greek art, as has been indicated in another chapter, helped to popularise the scissor-work of this type of shadow portraiture, and it became a fashionable craze. Though the cutting out with scissors and penknife sometimes took the form of landscape groups and small whole figures, the profile alone in small, though not miniature size, proved the most fascinating branch of scissor-work, and survived the longest in the favour of amateurs, because the purely mechanical shadow tracing required no skill, and inevitably gave a life-like likeness if traced with reasonable care.
There were several methods of securing steadiness on the part of the sitter and the best result as to arrangement of candle-light essential to the success of the portrait. Lavater, who believed so sincerely in the infallibility of the silhouette as an assistance in his physiognomical studies, gives elaborate directions as to how to obtain the best results. He says in Lecture XVI. (we spare our readers the long observations on silhouettes):—
“It may be of use to point out the best method of taking this species of portraits.
“That which has hitherto been pursued is liable to many inconveniences. The person who wants to have his portrait drawn is too incommodiously seated to preserve a perfectly immovable position; the drawer is obliged to change his place; he is in a constrained attitude, which often conceals from him a part of the shade. The apparatus is neither sufficiently simple nor sufficiently commodious, and, by some means or other, derangement must, to a certain degree, be the consequence.
“This will happen when a chair is employed expressly adapted to this operation, and constructed in such a manner as to give a steady support to the head and to the whole body. The shade ought to be reflected on fine paper, well oiled and very dry, which must be placed behind a glass, perfectly clear and polished, fixed in the back of the chair. Behind this glass the designer is seated; with one hand he lays hold of the frame, and with the other guides the pencil. The glass, which is set in a movable frame, may be raised or lowered at pleasure; both must slope at bottom, and this part of the frame ought firmly to rest on the shoulder of the person whose silhouette is going to be taken.
“Toward the middle of the glass, is fixed a bar of wood or iron furnished with a cushion to serve as a support, and which the drawer directs as he pleases by means of a handle half an inch long.
“Take the assistance of a solar microscope, and you will succeed still better in catching the outlines; the design also will be more correct....
“There are faces which will not allow of the most trifling alteration in the silhouette, or strengthen or weaken the outline but a single hair’s-breadth, and it is no longer the portrait you intended; it is one quite new, and of character essentially different.”
In this work of silhouette-making and physiognomical study, Lavater wished the whole world to co-operate with him, as Goëthe testified. On a long journey down the Rhine, he had the portraits taken by his draughtsman, Schmoll, of a great number of important people. This served the secondary purpose of interesting his sitters in his work. He also asked artists to send him drawings for his purpose, and wrote much on the physiognomical character of the figures in the pictures of such artists as Raphael and Vandyck.
Goëthe was intensely interested, and there is much of his correspondence extant on the subject. Enthusiastic at first, his zeal seems to have waned. On June 23rd, 1774, Lavater arrived at Goëthe’s house with Schmoll, and portraits were taken of the author of “The Sorrows of Werther,” and of his parents.
A year later, in August, 1775, Goëthe writes, imploring Lavater, “I beg you will destroy the family picture of us; it is frightful. You do credit neither to yourself nor to us. Get my father cut out, and use him as a vignette, for he is good. I do entreat of you to do this; you can do what you like with my head too, but my mother must not be recorded like that.”
An amusing sequel to this correspondence is that when the third volume of Lavater’s “Physiognomy” appeared containing her husband’s portrait alone, the councillor’s wife was extremely offended, and says that evidently the author did not think her face worthy to appear.
A scrap-book full of these machine- and scissor-made silhouettes, with copious notes made by Lavater on the character of the sitters, judged by the shadow portraits, is one of the chief treasures in the collection of Mr. Wellesley, and forms an important item in silhouette history in its use for scientific purposes.
A machine for the use of amateurs is owned by Dr. Beetham, descendant of Mrs. Edward Beetham, the clever silhouettist of Fleet Street. This machine for taking silhouettes is a box about the size of a cigar box. One end has a lens glued into a sliding block or frame for focusing purposes. A piece of looking-glass reflects the object on to a piece of frosted glass on the top of the box. The subject is drawn from this reduced shadow.
There were others besides Lavater who published advice as to the best way of taking silhouettes.
In “A Detailed Treatise on Silhouettes: their Drawing, Reduction, Ornamentation and Reproduction,” published in 1780, the author, after many allusions to prisma, cylinder, pyramid, cone, the sun and moon, and perpendicular and horizontal lines, gives indispensable rules for the silhouetteur:—
1. The surface on which the shadow is made must be upright.
2. It must be parallel with the head of the sitter.
3. The imaginary line running from the centre of the flame to the middle of the profile must be horizontal with the surface on which the shadow is to be cast.
4. The light must be as far from the head as possible, but the surface for drawing on must be as near the head as possible.
As will be seen from the print taken from Lavater’s book, these rules were fairly accurately carried out in the chair depicted. Practical hints are also given in the treatise as to paper, light, pencils, etc. Great stress is laid on the importance of obtaining paper large enough for the drawing of the enormous modern head-dress of women, for which, sometimes, two pieces were put together. We have seen interesting examples of this, where the paper is actually joined together with the thin old-fashioned pins of the period, and life-size heads, executed in black paper, in a country house in Sussex.
“A wax light is better than tallow or suet,” this careful mentor continues, “as there is nothing so harmful as a flare, which makes the shadow tremble. If one cannot obtain a wax candle, and must use a lamp, let it be dressed with olive oil. Coughing, sneezing, or laughing are to be avoided, as such movements put the shadow out of place.”
The reduction of shadow portraits so taken is then described at length, and by various methods, “as the physiognomical expression is more piquant in a reduced silhouette.” “The best of these mechanical reducers is the Stork’s Beak or Monkey (this is our present-day pantograph), which consists of two triangles so joined by hinges that they resemble a movable square, which is fixed at one point of the base of the drawing, while a point of the larger triangle follows the outline of the life-size silhouette. A pencil attached to the smaller triangle traces the same outline smaller and with perfect accuracy. By repeating these reductions, silhouettes may be made in brooch and locket size.”
“With regard to the ornamentation and finish of the silhouette portrait, black paint should be used.” We presume this would be for the fine lines of the hair, which are sometimes added to the background after paper-cut silhouettes are mounted. Chinese or Indian ink is advised, or pine-soot, mixed with brandy, gum, or beer.
Advice is also given as to painting round the paper outline: the paint should be put on from the pencil outline towards the centre. The anonymous author suggests that two portraits should be cut at once; the first to be stuck into the family album, the second to be hung upon the wall.
For such decorative purposes elaborate instructions are given. “Take a nice clear sun-glass and clean it with powdered chalk and clean linen to remove all grease and dirt. Cover this glass on one side with finely powdered white lead mixed with a little gum-water. When this is dry take the silhouette, which has been cut out of strong paper, place it on the powdered surface, and trace round the outline with a needle; remove the silhouette, and scrape away all the white within the drawn line. Thus one obtains a transparent silhouette, which can be turned into a black one by laying a piece of black velvet at the back of the glass, or if not velvet, fine black cloth or taffeta or paper.”
This silhouette recipe maker also suggests that the cut-out black silhouettes can be stuck on to the glass with Venetian turpentine, and the glass then treated with the white covering; or one can use tinfoil, which forms a mirror.
This brings us back to the background treatment for painted silhouettes without the aid of shadowgraphy and scissor-work, so that we need not repeat the various kinds.
In this remarkable book, which is in the possession of Professor Dr. Th. Slettner (Münich), and for a description of which we are indebted to Herr Julius Leisching, a further description of silhouette-making is given:—“By sticking together three or four sheets of paper and working at the back with a polishing steel, one can actually make a profile portrait in slight relief out of a cut-out silhouette in white paper, ‘giving it the appearance of a marble tablet or a plaster cast done by a sculptor,’” adds this enthusiast.
A treatise on this method exists in English, entitled “Papyro-Plastics; or the Art of Modelling in Paper, with Directions to cut, fold, join, and paint the same,” with eight plates, published in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Mention is also made of silhouettes in enamel on copper for snuff-boxes, lockets, and rings, and the black profile portraits on porcelain in the German volume.
Finally, the author praises a process by which, by means of a stencil, one can make one hundred copies a minute, and the reproduction of the silhouette portrait by woodcut and copper-plate impressions.
A second book appeared simultaneously, if not immediately before the treatise. It was published by Römhild at Leipzig, and in the following year (1780) Philip Heinrich Perrenon brought out a third, which is called “Description of Bon Magic; or the Art of Reduplicating Silhouettes easily and surely.”
The principal process is one which the author describes as “so simple that every woman who can make silhouettes can practise it as well as the best artist.”
“Take a piece of flat tin, polish it on one side, put the drawing on it and cut out the tin accordingly, and the form is obtained. Rub this form on the side to be printed off on a flat stone with sand. Damp some paper, and make a black mixture out of linseed oil and pine-soot. Make a pair of balls of horsehair covered with sheepskin. Get a small piece of hat felt. Blacken the shape or form with the black mixture put on with the horsehair ball; place it on the table, and over it, on the blackened side, the damp paper, on this a few sheets of waste paper and then the felt. Now nothing but the press is required; this consists of a rolling-pin, which can be made by any turner. Roll it over, and when the paper is taken away the silhouette, en Bon Magic, appears printed off.”
Illustrations of various implements are given, besides a simple pantograph for reducing the life-size shadow. Many pantographs are mentioned in connection with silhouette work. It is probable the earliest one was invented by Christopher Scheiner, a Jesuit, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was called the parallelogrammum delineatorium.
We meet it again in England, where mercifully its name is shortened, and it is interesting to see that it is a woman who applies for protection of her invention. The abridgment of her specification runs thus:—
Patents for Inventions.
Abridgments of Specifications.
Artists’ Instruments and Materials.
1618-1866.
A.D. 1775, June 24.—No. 1100.
Harrington, Sarah.—“A new and curious method of taking and reducing shadows, with appendages and apparatus never before known or used in the above art, for the purpose of taking likenesses, furniture, and decorations, either the internal or external part of rooms, buildings, &c., in miniature.” The person whose likeness is to be taken is placed so “as to procure his or her shadow to the best advantage, either by the rays of the sun received through an aperture into a darkened room, or by illuminating the room.” The face is then brought “directly opposite the light, so that the shadow may be reflected through a glass (or transparent paper);” the glass is movable in a frame “so as to fix it on a level direction with the head of the person.” The outline of the shadow is then traced with a pencil, &c., after which it is “reduced to a miniature size by an instrument called a pentagrapher.”
Respecting furniture, &c., “the articles required to be taken are to be placed in such a direction that their shadows may be reflected as above described, traced out in the same manner and reduced.” The shadows (as also the likenesses) are cut out “and placed upon black or other coloured paper or any dark body” and the external parts are, if required, decorated with cut paper, &c.
When a likeness is to be taken, accompanied with the external “part of a room or buildings,” a camera obscura is used; the reflected shadows are received on paper, the outlines are carefully marked, and then “either fill’d up with Indian ink or coloured, or cut out as above directed.”
[Printed, 4d. No Drawings.]
On December 22nd, 1806, Charles Schmalcalder applied for a patent for a machine of the same type, but of more complicated construction. We give the abridged specification, for it forms a humble though important link in silhouette history, having been much used by itinerant silhouettists at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
A.D. 1806, December 22.—No. 3000.
Schmalcalder, Charles.—“A delineator, copier, proportionometer, for the use of taking, tracing, and cutting out profiles, as also copying and tracing reversely upon copper, brass, hard wood, cardpaper, paper, asses’ skin, ivory, and glass, to different proportions, directly from nature, landscapes, prospects, or any object standing or previously placed perpendicularly, as also pictures, drawings, prints, plans, caricatures, and public characters.” This apparatus is composed of (1) a hollow rod “screw’d together, and from two to twelve feet, or still longer, chiefly made of copper or brass, sometimes wood, or any metal applicable;” the diameter is from half an inch to two inches and upwards, according to the length; one end carries a fine steel tracer, made to slide out and in and fastened by a milled-head screw, and in the other is “a round hole to take up either a steel point, blacklead pencil, or any other metallic point, which may be fastened therein by a mill’d-head screw;” (2) a tube about ten inches long and sufficient in diameter to allow the rod “to slide easily and without shake in it;” (3) a ball (in which the tube is fixed) “moveable between two half sockets;” (4) a frame of wood about two and a half or three feet long (the length depending on the length of the rod) and supported by two brackets; (5) a swing-board attached to the frame; (6) a clamp-screw; (7) a hook hanging on a string for the rod to rest in; (8) a weight on the back of the frame, connected thereto by a hook, “to which is attached a string forming a pulley, serving to prevent the point from acting upon the paper when not wanted.” Through the sides of the frame are holes at certain distances corresponding with marks on the rod, and “in copying any original, supposing to the size of ⅛, ¼, ½, ¾, &c.,” the swing-board and clamp-screw “must be transplanted to the different holes and divisions corresponding.” The paper or other substance is fastened to the swing-board by screws or is placed in a brass frame which slides up and down the board, and is kept in position by a spring. “The machine is fixed either to a partition in any room or to any piece of wood portable, and so constructed as to be easily fixed upright with a screw-clamp upon a table or any other stand.” In turning the rod round in the sockets “the tracer and point in the two ends of the rod must remain in the centre, to obtain which sometimes an adjustment with four screws” is required.
Directions are given for using the apparatus in taking profiles, in copying and tracing pictures, landscapes, &c., and in copying from nature “landscapes or whatever object exposes itself to view.”
[Printed, 6d. Drawing. See “Repertory of Arts,” vol. 10 (second series), p. 241; “Rolls Chapel Reports,” 7th Report, p. 195.]
Still lower was the shadow portrait to fall, when another contrivance was invented to trick the public into the belief that magic played a part in producing the likeness. An automatic figure was taken round the country which it was claimed could draw silhouettes. Somewhere about 1826 the automaton was brought to Newcastle, and is described as a figure seated in flowing robes with a style in the right hand, which by machinery scratched an outline of a profile on card, which the exhibitor professed to fill up in black. The person whose likeness was to be taken sat at one side of the figure, near a wall. “One of our party,” says an eye-witness, “detected an opening in the wall, through which a man’s eye was visible. This man, no doubt, drew the profile, and not the automaton. Ladies’ heads were relieved by pencillings of gold.”
The son of the great, little Madame Tussaud, who began her wax modelling in the Palais Royal in the days of the French Revolution, taking death-masks of many of the guillotine victims, thus advertises in 1823:—“J. P. Tussaud (son of Madame T.) respectfully informs the nobility, gentry, and the public in general, that he has a machine by which he takes profile likenesses. Price, 2s. to 7s., according to style.”
This machine was probably of the kind described by Blenkinsopp in Notes and Queries:—“A long rod worked in a movable fulcrum, with a pencil at one end and a small iron rod at the other, was the apparatus. He passed the rod over the face and head, and the pencil at the other end reproduced the outline on a card, afterwards filled in with lamp-black.”
It is probable that Edward Ward Foster, who described himself as “Profilist from London,” used such a machine, which he thus describes:—“The construction and simplicity of this machine render it one of the most ingenious inventions of the present day, as it is impossible in its delineation to differ from the outlines of the original, even the breadth of a hair.
“Mr. F. wishes the public to understand that, besides sketching profiles, this machine will make a complete etching on copper-plate, by which means any person can take any number he thinks proper, at any time, from the etched plate; and for the further satisfaction of the public, he will most respectfully return the money paid if the likeness is not good. Profiles in black at 5s. and upwards, etc. Derby, January 1, 1811.”
Mr. West, miniature and profile painter, from London, worked with the same machine. His prices were:—profiles on card, in black, 5s.; in colours, 10s. 6d.; on ivory, in colours, one guinea and upwards.
We have succeeded in tracing the recorded description of one of the sitters who actually had a portrait taken by such an instrument, and also one who saw such an instrument as late as 1879. The account is by Mr. H. Hems, Fair Park, Exeter, and brings our tale of mechanical contrivances in connection with silhouette portraiture to a fitting close:—
“Happening to be at Dundee at the time of the Tay Bridge disaster (it occurred upon the last Sunday evening in 1879, when 67 people were drowned), I recollect a Mr. Saunders, a saddler at Broughty Ferry, in the immediate neighbourhood, possessed and showed me as a curio one of these identical portrait-taking machines.”