When was the first silhouette made

During the years of and , professional and amateur artists would either paint or cut profiles — using paints or scissors. The below overview gives a sense of the expanse of silhouette portraits, but is no means exhaustive. There are many books with history, artists, and examples that have thrived over centuries.

Want to see silhouettes made in person? Bring Lauren to your event or order a silhouette from the comfort of your own home. Top image: Silhouette copies from William Bache's archive book He was disliked by those who were affected by his tax plans, chopping tax money from the rich and reducing cost expenditures in the French government.

Silhouette at this link. Profile portraits showed the images of their sitters when painted portraits were just too expensive or unable to be reproduced such as the profile at left of the first circus entrepreneur, Philip Astley. Do you notice any similarity between the profiles on the coins, and the profile portraits of the and s?

Look no farther than the teachings of the Greeks. One of the iconic silhouette images is the portrait believed to be Jane Austen seen at left , writing her romantic stories in the late 18th and early 19th s centuries, captivating hearts and spirits for hundreds of years. The decadent Regency period is especially remembered for silhouette portraits. Many European silhouettists immigrated and became very famous and rich, catering to the American politicians and very wealthy.

Others traveled to county fairs and small towns capturing the profiles and the hearts of countless thousands of ordinary folk. Silhouettes remain as popular today as ever. In fact, they have become one of the most collectable art forms. Unfortunately there are only a handful of silhouette cutters left, perhaps as few as 15 in the United States.

We of the computer age may be seeing the last generation of silhouette artists. In this country, many an amateur tried his or her hand at silhouette cutting, but there were a number who made a business of it. In assembling a collection, silhouettes by one of the names are desirable, but plenty of anonymous ones are interesting portraits well worth having. Master James Hubard who came from Great Britain and worked in Boston, Philadelphia and Richmond, made full-length and bust portraits of the cut-and-paste kind.

August Edouard , the famed French silhouette artist we mentioned prior, travelled all over this country in thes cutting full-length portraits which he usually mounted against sepia backgrounds. One frequently sees entire family groups by Edouard, cut and mounted in this way. The 27 full-length portraits, black against and indoor or outdoor setting, were reproduced by lithography in a book published by Kellogg in The invention of photography signaled the end of the silhouette as a widespread form of portraiture, however the skill was not lost, and traveling silhouette artists continued to work at state fairs into the 20th century.

The popularity of the silhouette portrait is being reborn in a new generation of people who appreciate the silhouette as a nostalgic way of capturing a significant occasion. In the United States and the UK silhouette artists have websites advertising their services at weddings and other such functions. In England there is an active group of silhouette artists.

In Australia, S. John Ross plied his scissors at agricultural shows for 60 years until his death in Other artists such as Douglas Carpenter produce silhouette images using pen and ink. Here are is a collection of some of my favorite rooms that feature silhouettes. Well, there you have it! This is all I could find out about silhouettes and I can now love and appreciate them even more, and hopefully start my own collection very soon!