The introduction of the name Silhouette into England seems to have been due to August Edouart, a Frenchman, who, though only commencing the black portrait cutting after leaving his own country, used the French word for his craft instead of the black shade, which had hitherto been the name in England for such profile portraits.

“How many times,” writes Edouart, in the chapter in his treatise which he naïvely calls “The Grievances and Miseries of Artists,” “have I had people who, immediately after entering my room, departed, exclaiming, ‘Oh! they are all black shades,’ and would not stop to inspect them.”

“The name silhouette, which appeared in the newspaper advertisements, seems to have given them to understand that it was a new kind of likeness done in colours, each of which (full-length figure) they expected to get for five shillings.”

Again, on another page, he exclaims, “Why does such prejudice exist against black shades, which I call silhouette likenesses?” Certainly none of the early shadow portrait painters on paper, glass, or plaster ever used this name, taken from the French Finance Minister. It was not used in England until after the commencement of Edouart’s work and the publication of his book. By this time, it must be remembered, black profile portraiture had deteriorated in beauty, and the artists who frequented fairs and places of amusement were less skilled, indeed, than the Miers, Fields, Beethams, and Rosenbergs of the eighteenth century.

“Obliged to quit my country in consequence of a change in its Government,” Edouart, the most prolific and important of all the scissor-men, describes himself as “thrown upon foreign ground, without friends and without knowledge of the language. I had then very little money left, for I had lost all I possessed in the evacuation of Holland in 1813. A few months after my arrival in England, I found myself, after payment of all my travelling expenses, in possession of no more than a five-pound note, which I immediately expended in advertising myself as a French teacher.”

Succeeding in this at first, the arrival of so many other Frenchmen after a time reduced his work, and Edouart sought other means of livelihood. He began to make devices, landscapes, etc., with human hair, though what led him to this quaint handicraft, or what previous training he had in it, we have not been able to discover.

After receiving the patronage of Her Royal Highness the late Duchess of York, and making the portraits of some of her dogs with the animals’ own hair, he worked for the Queen and Princess Charlotte. Edouart, whose industry seems always to have been remarkable, executed over fifty of these strange hair portraits, and held an exhibition, the catalogue of which lies before us.

In 1825, Madame Edouart died, and August was persuaded to try his hand at likeness cutting in order to better the performance of some machine artist, whose work he had condemned. Finding, much to his surprise, that he was able to produce likenesses with extraordinary facility and exactness, he was persuaded by his friends to employ his time in this way, “so as to divert the gloom from my sinking mind, and alleviate my sorrows.” It seems probable also that his new talent was useful in filling his much depleted purse.

After many expressions of reluctance that he, August Edouart, should be cut by society and become a black profile taker, he decided to make an art of what had been so long considered a mere mechanical process, for Edouart never seems to have heard of black painted profiles and the exquisite work of the early profile painters, but only the machine-made pictures by the itinerant workers.

The first full-length that Edouart took was of the Bishop of Bangor, Dr. Magendie. “I succeeded so well,” he says in his introduction, “that I took all his lordship’s family; and so pleased were they that I made forty duplicates. This début, being so far above my expectation, encouraged me to continue, and from that time, being much engaged by the first visitors of Cheltenham, I took a resolution to keep a copy of every one to form a collection.”

“This talent,” he continues, “showed itself so strongly, and I was so anxious, that I worked from morning till night, and even in my dreams my brain was so much overheated by that anxiety, that in those dreams I was cutting likenesses of great personages, kings, queens, etc.”

His method of holding the scissors was unusual. The reason for this peculiarity is thus described: “One day, when crossing a stile, a lady tore her dress by a nail which was put on the step mischievously. To prevent the recurrence, I took a stone to take the nail away: in the act of doing so my index finger was lacerated in such a manner that I could not use my scissors. I suffered a great deal for several days, and my mind being so much excited about it, I dreamt that I cut likenesses without using the index finger. I was so much struck by this that, as soon as I awoke, I took my scissors and have ever since used them in that manner.” In an old daguerrotype he is seen cutting a portrait in this manner.

In his treatise Edouart gives no detailed account of his journeys, though he notes that he has always kept a diary.

From newspaper advertisements we learn that he was in Cheltenham in June, 1829, where he is described in the Cheltenham Journal as assisting in Lavater’s system with regard to Physiognomy. At this stage the old idea that silhouette portraits must have a scientific use still clung to the craft.

In 1830 Edouart is in Edinburgh. In the Scotsman of February 13th the collection of ingenious works executed by Monsieur Edouart is mentioned. “This may be seen gratuitously at 72, Princes Street. Mr. Edouart makes silhouette likenesses, not only of the profile, but also of the whole person, by cutting them by the hand, out of black paper.” The account ends thus: “In his rooms the curious will find amusement and the philosophic employment.” The cannie Scotsman would attract the “unco’ guid” with learning and occupation as well as the frivolous with amusement.

On May 8th of the same year the Edinburgh Evening Courant takes notice of Edouart’s success in his likenesses of Sir Walter Scott (this portrait of Scott was recently purchased by the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, on account of its fine technique and the human and life-like attitude of the great novelist), the Dean of Faculty, and other distinguished characters of the city, and slyly regrets that Edouart departs so soon.

The clever hint at departure evidently had the desired effect, for in the following February, 1831, Edouart is still at Edinburgh, “his rooms thronged with visitors since his threatened departure. Six hundred likenesses in a fortnight, and declining to take new ones till the orders given by the first families are executed.” Five thousand duplicates are now on view, and his books are exhibited at Holyrood Palace, where they are much approved of by the Royal Family.

It was at the end of 1830 that Charles X., ex-king of France, and suite, arrived at Holyrood, and though Edouart acknowledges “a feeling of ill-will towards the Bourbon family is still lingering in my bosom, remembering—as I did—the losses I suffered in consequence of their restoration to the throne of France,” he attended, when requested in person by the Duchesse de Berri. He found “His Majesty pacing up and down, and the Duchesse presented me, reminding the King that I was a Frenchman. He seemed pleased and affable.”

The whole Royal Family, attended by the suite, nearly forty in number, formed a circle, in the centre of which Edouart cut his first paper portrait of Charles X. “By mistake,” he says, “I took paper of four folds, in place of one of two, and, as I had begun, so I cut out the likeness. As soon as I had finished it the little Prince (the Duke of Bordeaux) took one, Mademoiselle, his sister, took another, the Duchesse de Berri another.”

Edouart cut the likenesses that evening of the Duke d’Angoulême, the Duchesse d’Angoulême, the Duchesse de Berri, Mademoiselle Louise Marie, the Duke de Bordeaux, the Cardinal de Latil, and many of the suite. After this Edouart declares that he “was a daily visitor at Holyrood, and my exhibition was often honoured by Royalty.” The Duke de Bordeaux declared that if Edouart would become one of his suite, he should be called the Black Knight.

Two of the Holyrood portraits by Edouart were exhibited at the Amateur Art Society’s Exhibition in 1902, by Miss Head. They were thus described in the Catalogue:—

“119. Duchesse de Berri and her children (Henry V. and the Duchesse de Parma) at Holyrood, by Edouart.”

“120. Henry V. and the Duchesse de Parma as children at Holyrood.”

In the recently discovered folios which belonged to Edouart himself, and which serve as an invaluable record of the entourage of Charles X. at Holyrood, very many of these likenesses appear; most of them have the original autograph of the sitter. From the wonderfully interesting groups of shadows we see the vie intime of the exiled king. He is surrounded by his children, his chamberlains and equerries, intimate friends, physicians (for body and soul). Even L’Abbé Focart, Confesseur du Roi, figures amongst them; and visitors to Holyrood, such as the Baron de Size and the Baron de Sepmanville, are included; besides the dogs and horses, the ponies of the children, and the toys and playthings with which they amused themselves in those days of exile.

Even when such success rewarded the efforts of Edouart, he is still in apologetic mood with regard to his art, and declares that if his work had not been good the French Royal Family would not have encouraged it. “They had seen a great quantity of those common (machine-made) black shades in Paris, and had also a great dislike to them, which was soon removed when they saw the nature of mine.” He is never able to refrain from a sneer at the other silhouettists.

In December, 1831, the Glasgow Free Press declares that “Monsieur E.’s rooms need only to be known to become a fashionable resort for lovers of the fine arts.” The hair models seem to have formed part of the exhibition.

In October, 1832, Edouart is still in Glasgow, and his likenesses now number 45,000, including the Orphan Asylum and all its managers, the directors of the Commercial Bank, and several others. In London he took 800 members of the Stock Exchange, of which he sold several books.

Edouart seems to have moved on to Dublin in 1833, but we doubt if he was pleased when the Dublin Evening Mail of July 24th describes him as “the most comical and at the same time the cleverest artist from Paris. His art gives the scissors all the expressive powers of the pencil, and extracts from a single tint of black the miraculous effects of a whole rainbow of colours.”

Edouart is by now cutting out genre pictures, and subjects from “Æsop’s Fables” are mentioned, while the portraits increase rapidly in number, 6,000 being taken in Dublin alone. The Archbishop of Dublin and a great number of clergy and the officers of the garrison head the list. In his exhibition he shows, amongst thousands of others, His Royal Highness the late Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Duke of Wellington; the Bishops of Norwich, Bangor, St. Davids, and Bristol; Doctors Chalmers and Gordon; Edward Irving, Charles Simeon, Rowland Hill, Joseph Wolfe, Jabez Bunting, Sir Walter Scott, Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Opie (herself a silhouettist), Kean, Liston, Power, Sir Astley Cooper, Baron Rothschild, etc.

In August, 1834, Edouart went to Cork. Later he visited Kinsale, Fermoy, Mallow, Limerick, and many other places. Paganini’s portrait was taken at Edinburgh in October, 1832, where Edouart went, travelling from Glasgow on purpose to obtain it. Signor Paganini declared it was the first likeness of himself which was not caricatured. This full-length portrait shows the maestro standing, violin in hand, just ready to begin. In the background are lithograph portraits of the members of an orchestra: they are seated in a domed music-room.

It was in 1835 that Edouart’s book was published. We presume it had been written during the time of his prodigious activities in silhouette cutting while he moved from place to place and conducted his exhibition. It is a thin demy octavo volume of 122 pages, now extremely rare. The copy in the possession of the author was presented to Miss C. J. Hutchings by Edouart at Cheltenham, August 25th, 1836. There are eighteen full-page plates, showing black portraits or fancy figures mounted on lithograph backgrounds, by Unkles & Klasen, 26, South Mall, Cork. In the original volumes of duplicates kept by Edouart many of these mounts were found, as the silhouettist doubtless kept a number by him ready for mounting his portraits.

In a chapter headed “The Vexations and Slights my Profession has brought upon me,” Edouart deplores “the vulgarity into which silhouettes have fallen, so that I could not walk in public with a lady on my arm without hearing such remarks as this, ‘Who can she be—that lady with the black shade man?’ The same disposition to cast odium on me was displayed whenever I was seen walking arm-in-arm with friends who moved in circles of high life. It went so far that, being in the habit of walking at the Wells of Cheltenham, and accustomed to go to the balls at the Rotunda, I was forced to deprive myself of the pleasure of being with my friends in these places. On different occasions several persons of high rank in society accused me of being somewhat proud,” and so on through many pages.

On one occasion his greeting was of the most cordial description, owing to an amusing mistake. “A friend having given a recommendatory letter to a particular friend in town, I was received in a better manner than ever I was received since I began taking black shades. As my friend would not recommend me to a suitable lodging, we went to the editor of a newspaper, to whom he spoke, and then presented me to him. Upon this we all went to the governor of the castle, who had a house to let in the town. The governor willingly consented to let me have the house, though he feared the boards might not be strong enough for the exercise of my profession, and the quantity of people it would be likely to attract; indeed, it would be advisable to practise on the ground floor, that the noise and bustle would not be so great, and the like....

“The governor, who had been a military man, asked me very good-humouredly if it were not trespassing on my goodness to allow him to take a round with me, saying that he had taken lessons, and took off his coat. I declared that I had not brought my tools with me.” The scene is described in several pages, and shows how the governor offers eventually to lend gloves, when it dawns upon the profilist that the letter has been misread, and the sports around him imagine he is a pugilist.

Edouart seems to have suffered much at the hands of his sitters.

“But, Monsieur Edouart,” says one of these, “you have taken John, who is a head taller than his brother William, a great deal smaller. How can that be? It is a mistake of yours; you must correct that.”

“You must know, madam,” replies the silhouettist, “that it is according to the rule of perspective. Do you not see that John is at least six yards farther in the background than his brother?”

“Yes! but his is cut smaller,” persists the aggrieved parent.

Gentlemen demanding ladies’ profiles were refused by this veritable Mrs. Grundy of silhouettists. His refusal is given in language worthy of the Fairchild family.

“Ladies are never exhibited, nor duplicates of their likenesses either sold or delivered to anyone but themselves or by their special order. This resolution I have taken, and I follow it very strictly, being fully aware of the consequence that would result if this measure was not adopted. Gentlemen presume that they are entitled to possess the likenesses of any ladies they like. But no—no—they cannot deceive me by false pretences. I am too much upon my guard to be surprised. The books in which I keep duplicates are all defended with a patent lock.”

Monsieur Edouart rivals the serpent in wiliness when a lady’s portrait is so desired and the gentleman offers the address where it should be sent. The artist says, “I do not require to know your direction, gentlemen. I know that of the lady, to whom I shall send it, and she herself will deliver it to you.” We should imagine that, under those conditions, orders were usually cancelled.

“Some make themselves pass for relations,” adds Edouart, who is not without a sense of humour, though he does take himself so seriously, “as a brother, cousin, uncle, etc., but all this is in vain.”

Edouart seems to have used special means of his own to extract payment of debts, and his illustration “The Screw” shows in what manner his clients were brought to book. The episode is described at great length in his book, but unfortunately the name of the sitter for “The Screw” is withheld. Briefly, a young man had his portrait cut, approved of the likeness, but regretted, after seeing a picture of a friend in a dress-coat, that he had not also worn that kind. In a very rude manner he said he would not pay for the completed likeness until another was done in a dress-coat. Edouart said he must be paid for both. This the man refused, so the artist refused to cut the second picture and was left with the portrait on his hands. To cut the screw and add the ring and hook was the work of a few moments, and the picture was then exhibited in a conspicuous position in the window, where everyone recognised it. “Since that time, I have not had occasion to make a screw,” adds Edouart, naïvely.

The subject of caricature in silhouette is a very interesting one, but cannot be fully treated here. There are few examples, and it is strange that so virile and graphic an art as that of the silhouette should show so few specimens of caricature work.

In August Edouart’s work just such aptitude for seizing the salient feature in face or figure is invariably shown which is the quality most required by the caricaturist, but Edouart never allows his scissors to swerve from faithful and exact portrayal; no note of exaggeration is seen even when executing the fine studies, such as his beggar and itinerant groups in the streets of Bath or Cheltenham.

In the figure of George Cary, porter at Price’s auction rooms, Bath, taken April 4th, 1827, there is no exaggeration. The man appears balancing two fine candlesticks on a small tray; the unerring likeness is self-evident. It is the same with the blind gingerbread-seller of Gay Street; the bill-sticker who is about to paste up one of Edouart’s own labels; John Hulbert, the old scavenger; and with several of the no less clever street characters of Bath. In these we see consummate skill in depicting the man or woman in life as they were, but with no sense of bias towards caricature.

Amongst the old letters recently discovered with the precious folios of Edouart’s duplicates is one from “S. H.,” dated Birmingham, June 1st, 1838:—

“My dear Friend,—On seeing your Exhibition, I was astonished at the application you must have bestowed on an art I had till then considered as useless. I found likenesses of unrivalled talent, not only accurate outlines, but giving the character of those whom they represented. Write to me from America. The Americans are known to encourage talent of every description, and I hope to see you return laden with the produce of your labours in that fresh and interesting country to the place you are now quitting.”

For how long Edouart had been contemplating his American tour we are not aware. In the year 1839 he was in Liverpool, working at his profession. In the same year he sailed for the United States, taking with him his volumes of English, Scotch, and Irish portraits for exhibition purposes.

He seems to have met with immediate success, and the volumes which contain his American portraits give so complete a pictorial record of the social and political history of the time (1839-1849) as probably no other nation possesses. During his first year three hundred and eighty-one portraits were taken in New York, Saratoga, Boston, and Philadelphia, amongst them being Mr. Belmont, who is entered as “August Belmont, Agent of the House of Rothschild, New York.” There are two portraits, 8½ inches in height, of this man, who was an important social and financial figure of the day, and founder of the Jockey Club of New York; congress-men, editors, journalists, and officers of the Army and Navy in uniform.

The wives and children of these interesting men are also included in the collection, and later, when he visited New Orleans and other States where slavery was permitted, we find occasionally a slave’s picture “belonging” to the family. As in his English collections, the names of his sitters, the date, and name of place where taken, and sometimes curious details such as height and weight, are all entered, not only beneath each portrait in the folio, but also at the back of the portrait itself; and also in his list-books newspaper cuttings are sometimes added. In 1840 five hundred and thirty-one portraits were taken in the same places, in Washington and Saratoga Springs. Major-General Winfield Scott (Commander-in-Chief) is amongst them.

The year 1841 was the time of the great Log Cabin election, and Harrison, the hero, is shown with two autographs in Edouart’s books, besides his whole Cabinet and the orators, demagogues, place-hunters, and abolitionists, who all seem to have visited the studio of the artist, whatever their political opinions. Seven hundred and sixty-five portraits were taken in this year at Washington and elsewhere.

After the tragic death of Harrison, John Tyler, the only man who was President without election, was taken by Edouart, and it gave the author great pleasure to present to the American nation his autographed silhouette. It was taken at the White House in 1841, and was returned there through Mr. Taft in June, 1911, after seventy years’ wandering. When arranging the presentation, His Excellency, James Bryce, our Ambassador in Washington, was much interested, because Edouart had visited his old home in the north of Ireland and cut the portraits of his father and grandfather, which are still preserved there, and are fine likenesses.

In 1842 Edouart travelled further afield, and made six hundred and forty-one pictures in New Orleans and other States he had not yet visited; in Cambridge he cut Longfellow, the Appleton family, the President of Harvard, and dozens of professors and students of the College.

In 1843 four hundred and sixty of the citizens of Philadelphia, New York, Saratoga Springs, Norwich (Conn.), Charlestown, and other towns too numerous to mention, were taken, named, dated, and placed in his folios. There are an interesting crowd of congress-men, senators, financial celebrities, actors, musicians, editors, men of science, and the members of the Army and Navy, mostly in uniform, including Macomb, then Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army.

In 1844 five hundred and eighty-nine portraits are extant from a dozen different cities, and then we come down to eight pictures taken in 1845, four only in 1846, and four only in the next three years.

The reason for this falling off in numbers is so extraordinary that we give it in continuing Edouart’s life-story. It is probable that the artist was just as industrious during the last five years of his tour in America as he had been in the first four, but his work is destroyed.

In December, 1849, he packed all his folios in great cases, and set out for home, sailing in the ship “Oneida,” laden with bales of Maryland cotton. When off the coast of Guernsey she was caught in a great gale, and was wrecked in Vazon Bay on December 21st. The crew and passengers were saved and some of the baggage; a case, containing fourteen of the precious folios, some old letters and list-books, was saved; all the rest was lost, with much of the cargo, when the ship broke up two days after she had gone on the rocks.

Edouart suffered much from exposure, for he was then an old man, and the loss of the greater part of his life’s work so preyed upon his mind that he never again practised his profession. The Lukis family, resident at Guernsey, hospitably entertained the old artist, and he gave his remaining volumes, fourteen in number, containing his European collection and his American portraits, to Frederica Lukis before he left for Guines, near Calais, where he died in 1861, in his seventy-third year.

The writer was fortunately enabled to secure these volumes through the medium of The Connoisseur Magazine, and has included illustrations from them in the present work.