Small, often beautifully framed and with an air of mystery, silhouettes are an intriguing field for collectors, and look striking placed together on a wall
Silhouettes are an ancient art form, just as powerful today as thousands of years ago. They’re a bold, uncomplicated form of imagery.
The 1700s & 1800s – the peak of silhouette production
The peak of silhouette portrait production was in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Whether cut from paper or, more rarely, painted onto glass, ivory or plaster, artists’ methods for creating the image were largely the same. The sitter posed by a large sheet of paper, their shadow cast by candlelight. Meanwhile, the artist drew their outline. This was then reduced using a pantograph – a zigzag-shaped instrument used for scaling images – and a miniature version produced. It must have been very exciting to watch – art as entertainment.
Scores of silhouette-makers set up business in fashionable parts of London like the Strand, as well as spa towns such as Bath. Technical innovations could help give them a competitive edge. John Miers, one of the most prolific silhouettists of the late 18th century, specialised in painting onto plaster, using soot mixed with beer to create delicate, gauzy portrayals of sitters’ hair, lace caps and bonnets. Isabella Beetham, with premises close to Miers, painted onto the reverse of convex glass, dabbing her fingers into sticky enamel paint to recreate ladies’ delicate muslin dresses. Other artists highlighted their portraits with bronzing (powdered gold mixed with gum) or added detail with white paint.
Where did the term 'silhouette' come from?
Until the 19th century, however, what we now know as a silhouette went by a completely different name – a ‘black shade’ or ‘profile’. The term silhouette was imported from France. Bizarrely, it comes from a French finance minister who briefly served King Louis XV. Theories abound as to how his name became associated with the art form. In 1760, Étienne de Silhouette imposed heavy taxes to fund the King’s ambitious military campaigns. De Silhouette’s taxes were deeply unpopular with the French people, and his name became synonymous with anything cheap, austere, or penny-pinching. Possibly the connection was made because the black profile portraits were a much more affordable alternative to a miniature, hand-painted on ivory.
Silhouette lasted in the job for less than a year before he was sacked. Some draw parallels between his short tenure and the few minutes it took to sit for a silhouette and claim this is why the name stuck. Others say that Monsieur de Silhouette was a paper-cutting fanatic, insisting visitors to his home posed for their cut-out portrait and decking the walls, floor to ceiling, with his amateur artworks.
Prices at auction
Over the years, many of the glass, plaster and ivory examples have been damaged, while paper silhouettes are susceptible to water and mould. So, to have an 18th- or early-19th-century example in good condition, especially if it is by a collectable artist, means it will perform better at auction. You can spend anything between £20 and £2,000 on a silhouette today.
The French artist, Augustin Edouart, who was active in Britain in the early 19th century became one of the most important silhouette artists.
For serious collectors of silhouettes, it’s often the work of a particular artist that drives them. If a silhouette isn’t signed and dated, the trade labels on the back can give a lot of information about the maker. The names of the sitters are sometimes also included, which some buyers like, especially if they enjoy researching family history.
They are also quite small, often nicely framed, and they look really striking displayed together en masse.
Brighton has a rich tradition of silhouette-making. When the Prince Regent made Brighton his party destination and built the Royal Pavilion, the town became a place where the wealthy wanted to be seen.
New buildings were erected, and local services and sites for visitors grew. This included the establishment of the Chain Pier in 1823 – its towers contained kiosks housing silhouette artists from the very start. Newspapers and other sources show around a dozen silhouette artists in operation, either on the pier or in the main tourist parts of town near the seafront in the 1820s and 1830s.
This was the peak in production. Silhouette art is generally perceived to have gone into decline in quality from the 1820s, becoming reduced to a cheap tourist novelty. By the late 1830s, with the arrival of photography, silhouettes were in decline, but they enjoyed a revival in the 1920s when they seemed to represent something more meaningful and handmade than a photograph.
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