August, i 9 i 6 
21 
Lightfoot (Liverpool 
1785) and the famous 
American artist, Mrs. Pa¬ 
tience Lovell Wright, who 
was born in 1725 and lived 
in Bordentown, New Jer¬ 
sey, afterwards in London. 
Of her work Horace Wal¬ 
pole spoke in highest praise. 
How They Were Made 
Probably the heyday of 
the art of the silhouette in 
England was marked by the 
work of John Miers (1792- 
1827), of Charles of Rosen¬ 
berg and of Mrs. Beetham. 
Some of the silhouettes 
were cut out of black paper 
and pasted on white card. 
Others were outlined on 
card, ivory, plaster, bone, 
silk, glass, metal, etc., and 
filled in with black or oc¬ 
casionally gold, silver and flat color. Some 
of the silhouettes were small and others 
almost microscopic. Again, a fashion ob¬ 
tained with early American silhouette mak¬ 
ers of cutting the shade portrait out of the 
center of a white card and then backing the 
card with black cloth or paper which showed 
through the opening and thus formed the 
silhouette. Silhouettes of this sort were 
practically unknown in England, however. 
Another mode of making silhouettes was 
to paint them with a mixture concocted of 
pine soot and beer on the inside of convex 
glass surfaces backed with ivory colored 
plaster. These, of course, were very durable. 
In Germany and in other countries me¬ 
chanical devices were invented to facilitate 
the making of silhouettes. When such ma¬ 
chines were employed the sitters would be 
placed so that their shadows would fall, life 
size, upon convenient screens. The out¬ 
lines were then drawn. Afterwards, by 
means of a reducing pantograph, the large 
By means of a reducing pantograph the large 
shadow outline ivas brought down to miniature 
An old woodcut showing the first step 
in making the silhouette. Some of the 
artists turned them out at the rate of 
two a minute 
the words “Bach e’s 
Patent.” Bache did silhou¬ 
ettes of many Salem, Mas¬ 
sachusetts, worthies. In¬ 
deed, Salem seems to have 
had a hankering for silhou¬ 
ettes, and silhouette exhibi¬ 
tions were held there in va¬ 
rious years from 1791 to 
1801. Doyle, who did a 
silhouette of Samuel Foster 
of Boston Tea Party fame, 
was Boston’s only local sil- 
houettist of note. 
Later Silhouettists 
Of all silhouette artists, 
however, Auguste Eduart, 
a Frenchman born in 1788 
who sought refuge in Lon¬ 
don in 1815 after the Napo¬ 
leonic disasters, was the 
most popula r. Eduart 
earned a living teaching 
French in London until accident disclosed 
to him his ability to make silhouettes. 
After the death of his wife in 1825 he set 
to work making these shadow pictures, and 
his skill and success were extraordinary. 
For a full-length he charged five shillings, 
for the portrait of a child under eight, three 
shillings sixpence, and for a bust silhouette 
two-and-six. In 1839 he came to America 
and did silhouettes of all the notables of 
the day. Four years before he had pub¬ 
lished his “A Treatise on Silhouette Like¬ 
nesses,” a rare volume and one eagerly 
sought today by collectors. 
William Henry Brown, who was born in 
Charleston, South Carolina, in 1808 and 
died in 1883, was the last of the old school 
of American silhouettists. He gave up the 
art in 1859. Brown was a quicker cutter 
than Eduart. From one to five minutes was 
the time he gave to a silhouette. His “Por¬ 
trait Gallery of Distinguished American 
Citizens,” illustrated in silhouette, was 
(Continued on page 50) 
The silhouette has found place in Japanese 
art, being used effectively in two values 
or shades of intensity 
shadow picture was brought down to mini¬ 
ature and finally cut out or filled in with 
black pigment, as the artist elected. 
Probably cutting out was less common a 
mode of procedure than filling in with paint, 
judging from the various antique examples 
that have been handed down to us. One 
of the best known of these cutters was 
William James, “Master Hubbard," an Eng¬ 
lish boy who at the age of thirteen began the 
art, exhibiting extraordinary skill. At sev¬ 
enteen he came to America and settled in 
Boston, finally abandoning silhouette cutting 
to take up portrait painting, influenced by 
Gilbert Stuart. Master Hubbard’s fee for 
cutting a portrait silhouette was fifty cents. 
The time he took to make one was seldom 
over half a minute! Charles Peale Polk, 
nephew of Charles Wilson Peale, in Phila¬ 
delphia ; Doolittle, Dewey, Master Hanks, 
Griffing, William Bache and William King 
in New England; J. F. Vallee and S. Fol- 
well in Washington, were other famous 
silhouettists in America. On the Bache 
silhouettes one generally finds embossed 
The smallest on record—exact size. A 
bull fight cut by a Mexican Indian. Sil¬ 
houetting is a favorite pastime of those 
Indians 
Reproduced from an original by Auguste 
Eduart, made in New Orleans in 1844. 
Note the background introduced 
