Notebook

Notebook, 1993-

MATERIALS & METHODS

Drawing

Silhouette
An outline image in one, solid, flat colour, giving the appearance of a shadow cast by a solid figure. The term is applied particularly to profile portraits in black against white (or vice versa), either painted or cut from paper, which were extremely popular in the period c.1750-c.1850. Silhouettes offered the quickest and cheapest method of portraiture (their art has been called 'the poor man's miniature'), and their popularity was fostered by the Neoclassical taste and given intellectual prestige by J. C. Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy (1775-8, English translation 1789-98), which were held in great respect throughout Europe, notably by Goethe, and which relied on silhouettes for the exposition of their theme. The usual format was a head profile, but the range extended even to conversation pieces. After 1800 a greater variety of techniques was developed, but the strength of the silhouette was vitiated by the introduction of colour, gilding, and fancy backgrounds. Its death-blow, like that of the miniature, was dealt by the popularization of photography, although interesting experiments, such as the German film-maker Lotte Reiniger's animated silhouette cartoon films, made in the 1930s, have been attempted. The word 'silhouette' derives from Etienne de Silhouette (1709-67), French finance minister under Louis XV, who was notorious for his parsimony and cut shadow portraits as a hobby; hence the phrase 'à la silhuoette' came to mean 'on the cheap'. In England silhouette portraits were generally called 'shades' or 'profiles' up to the end of the 18th cent.

[Chilvers, Ian, Harold Osborne, and Dennis Farr, eds. Oxford Dictionary Of Art. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.]










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