20 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
SILHOUETTES OLD AND NEW 
Which Answers the Question of Who 
was Silhouette and Why and How 
Silhouettes were Made and Collected 
GARDNER 
Sarah, Dutchess of Dev¬ 
onshire. A silhouette to 
which has been added 
defining lines of white 
TEALL 
In many instances the 
black was stippled on in¬ 
stead of being laid on 
fiat, giving this effect 
N EARLY a century and a half ago 
Johann Kaspar Lavater, of Zur¬ 
ich, wrote his famous work on physi¬ 
ognomy, laying great stress therein on 
the power of the outline of the human 
profile to express traits of character. 
That was before the silhouette had 
come to be known by this name. 1 hen 
it was generally called a shade. 
“What,” wrote Lavater, “is more im¬ 
perfect than a portrait of the human 
figure drawn after the shade! And 
yet what truth does not this portrait 
possess! This spring, so scanty, is 
for that reason the more pure.” 
The silhouette offers a delightful field for 
the collector to browse in. Not only is the 
silhouette portrait, genre-subject or land¬ 
scape, artistically interesting, but silhouettes 
are not difficult to acquire as compared with 
many other objects that attract the col¬ 
lector's fancy. Of course genuine original 
examples of the work of the most noted sil- 
houettists have been in demand these many 
years past, and the prices for such speci¬ 
mens is higher in consequence than for un¬ 
signed or unknown silhouettes. However, 
a very interesting plan is to combine the new 
with the old, to collect modern silhouettes 
as well as antique ones, for it is well to re¬ 
member that modern silhouettists display a 
skill in this artistic craft that does not suffer 
in comparison with the earlier silhouette 
cutters. It is an art that has endured. 
As to the origin of the silhouette, tradi¬ 
tion has it that Korinthea, daughter of 
Dibutades, who lived about 600 B. C., found 
the affections of her lover waning and re¬ 
alized that she would soon be left alone. 
In her sorrow she traced the outline of 
his shadow against the white marble wall 
one day as he sat by her side. Thus, Pliny 
tells us, she sought ever to hold his image 
before her sight. Poets and painters alike 
have immortalized the pretty story. Ben¬ 
jamin West, Mulready, Le Brun and many 
others have employed the subject in their 
pictures, so there is no lack of evidence. 
Wi-io Was Silhouette? 
Lor a long time silhouettes were, as has 
already been noted, referred to as shades. 
Often, too, they were called shadowgraphs. 
Just how the 
name silhouette 
came to be attached 
to shadow pictures 
i s interesting t o 
note. Etienne de 
Silhouette 
(sometimes the 
name is spelled Si- 
houette, with¬ 
out the /) was a 
Erench Minister of 
State who was born 
in 1706 and died in 
For some time German and Italian artists have 
been using silhouette drawings for illustrations. 
Little Red Riding Hood, however, is not intended 
for a Ntibian 
A German silhouette illustration of Jordine and 
Joringel, by D. Polster, showing the delicacy of 
effect attained by fine lines and scroll-like curves 
on a tohite ground 
1767. He was secretary to the Due 
d’Orleans and was one of the Com¬ 
missioners appointed to settle the 
Franco-British frontiers in Acadia in 
1749. That was before his appoint¬ 
ment as Controleur General, which 
was made in 1757 in the face of great 
opposition, as his economical traits 
were not relished by the extravagant 
nobility. To Madame de Pompadour, 
I believe, the credit should be given 
for obtaining the appointment. Some 
day, perhaps, the world will come to 
understand how the Pompadour saved 
France as often as popularly she is 
thought to have ruined it. In the first 
twenty-four hours of Silhouette’s ministry 
economies to the extent of seventy-two mil¬ 
lion francs were effected, it is said. Before 
long those opposed to him denounced his 
economies bitterly. He was called the Miser 
of France, Prince of Penury, and so on. 
However, he persisted. As a result Sil¬ 
houette, as a name, came to be applied for 
a time to all cheap things. Etienne de Sil¬ 
houette died in 1767, but the memory of his 
economies outlasted his policies and found 
his name a byword abroad as well as at 
home. When the fashion for cutting por¬ 
trait shades was at its height in England 
about 1825, the art was given the name of 
the French Minister who had died over 
fifty years before ! And the name has clung. 
The Early Silhouettists 
In those days the portrait painters (that 
is, the less well known ones, not the mas¬ 
ters) found the profile shade portraits so 
skilfully cut were hurting their own busi¬ 
ness by reason of the very cheap prices 
which even the best of these new-art pro¬ 
ducers charged. 1 venture to say that pro¬ 
fessional jealousy lay at the bottom of at¬ 
taching Etienne de Silhouette’s name to 
something he had nothing to do with! 
The art of the silhouette was by no means 
a new thing to England in 1825. As far 
back as the time of William and Mary Mrs. 
Elizabeth Pyberg did silhouette portraits of 
the King and Queen. With Korinthea she 
shares the honors of feminine fostering of 
the art, and so do the later followers, Mrs. 
Opie (wife of the celebrated painter), Mrs. 
Leigh Hunt, Min¬ 
na Brandes (Ber¬ 
lin, 1765), Mrs. 
Beetham (London, 
1785), the Empress 
Maria Theresa, the 
Princess Elizabeth 
of England 
(daughter of 
George the Third), 
Eleanor Park Cus- 
tis (step-daughter 
of George Wash- 
i n g t o n), Mrs. 
A country carnival, after the German fashion, vividly portrayed in solid shadow¬ 
graph by Ferdinand Staeger 
