Silhouettes were easy to print, and were also much less expensive than colour plates-which had to be separately printed, then glued into books by hand. Writer Hans Christian Andersen often produced silhouette illustrations, as did many other artists. With the advent of photography, the popularity of silhouettes as a form of portraiture dropped, although travelling silhouette artists continued to work at fairs well into the twentieth century.Īs an art form, silhouettes survived primarily within the world of illustration. In the United States, silhouettes were particularly popular between 17. In England, the most renowned silhouette artists was John Miers who actually had a silhouette studio on the Strand in London.Ĭollection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, England. When her father saw this, he pressed clay into the outline, then fired it in his kiln, providing his daughter with a permanent low-relief portrait of her beloved.ĭuring the eighteenth century, one of the most famous silhouette artists was August Edouart, who cut multiple versions of portraits of British and French nobility, as well as American presidents. ![]() ![]() Before he left, she traced his profile, cast on the wall by lamplight. The story goes that the potter's daughter was deeply in love with a man about to leave on a long journey. 77–79, Pliny the Elder tells writes about a potter named Butades, said to have invented silhouette portraits in clay. In his Natural History, written around A.D. Because of these strict economies, de Silhouette's name became associated with anything done cheaply-such as silhouette cutouts, which were an inexpensive alternative to painted portraits.ĭuring the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, silhouette portraits were more commonly known as "shades" or "profiles" because of the ways in which they were made: painted on ivory, plaster or cardboard "cut and paste" in which the shape was cut out of dark paper and pasted onto a light background or "hollow cut" in which a negative image was produced on light paper and placed on a black background.Īlthough the art of silhouette was most popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its antecedents are much older. In 1759, during the Seven Years War, France's credit crisis forced de Silhouette to impose severe austerity measures upon the French people-particularly the wealthy. ![]() The word "silhouette" comes, oddly enough, from a French finance minister named Étienne de Silhouette. Skilled silhouette artists usually travelled from town to town, and were able to cut out a person's At one point, silhouette portraiture was a popular feature of Silhouettes can be painted, drawn or cut out, although cut-outs are the Although traditional silhouettes were cut from paper, today silhouettes are created in many other media, from photography and film to leather and plastic. I didn't feel like using fancy tools today, so I thought I'd try making some silhouettes.Ī silhouette is a solid shape in a single colour-usually black against white-representing a person, scene or other subject.
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