Early silhouette artists copied a person's profile onto black paper and then cut it out by hand.
Silhouette art originated in France in the 1600s, moved through England and reached the height of its popularity in the United States in the late 1700s. Silhouette cutting began as an amusement for European royalty but in the U.S. became a popular way to capture portraits of both privileged and common people.
Fundamentals
Silhouette art, whether antique or contemporary, uses shadow to capture the profile of a subject.
Silhouettes, also known as paper cuttings and shadows, were created when the subject sat sideways in front of a screen so that a light on the opposite side cast the person's profile shadow onto the screen. Silhouette artists outlined the shadow and then cut it out of thin black paper, which was then pasted onto a white card, according to the website "Paper Cutters." Silhouettes reproduced the person's profile---hair, forehead, nose, lips and chin---and offered an inexpensive alternative to costly full-color painted portraits, according to Peggy McClard Antiques.
Origins
Silhouette portraits in paper date back to the early 1600s, when French royalty hired artists to make free-hand cuttings of their profiles, including elaborate hairpieces and clothing, according to the website "Portraits in Silhouette." The art was named after Etienne de Silhouette, the French finance minister in 1759 who perfected the art of cutting profiles.
Prior to the French Revolution, aristocrats invited silhouette artists to elaborate balls to provide activities for guests as well as to document the latest fashions, according to the website "Silhouette Man." At the time, Etienne de Silhouette and his oppressive tax policies were so hated by peasants that they protested by wearing black to poke fun at his hobby, shouting "We are silhouettes," according to the website "Silhouette Man." After the protests, the name became synonymous with black cutout portraits in profile.
Popularity
The popularity of silhouettes spread to the rest of Europe in the 1700s, although artists in England generally painted silhouettes instead of cutting them from paper. British silhouette artists initially made a life-size cutout of the subject's shadow, then used a pantograph to reduce the size for painting, according to the website "Portraits in Silhouette." A pantograph consists of two pens affixed to each other so that when the silhouette was traced with one pen, the other would create an exact copy on a smaller scale.
English Silhouettes
England's silhouette artists painted the portrait solid black using soot on plaster or glass. The silhouette often was embellished with hair, ribbons, frills or other decorative items, according to the website "Silhouette Man." As aristocrats demanded more elaborate painted silhouettes, artists embellished them with precious stones to represent jewelry or snuff boxes, according to Peggy McClard Antiques.
Early American Silhouettes
Silhouettes reached the peak of their popularity in the United States from about 1790 to 1840, according to contemporary scissor artist Karl Johnson. Americans developed a new type of silhouette by putting cut or painted silhouettes onto lithograph or watercolor backgrounds, according to Peggy McClard Antiques.
The invention and widespread use of the camera led to the decline of silhouette portraits, but computer and laser technology in the early 2000s has led to renewed interest in the art, according to Karl Johnson, although many artists continue to cut out silhouettes by hand.
Types
Antique silhouettes can be found in four types, according to Peggy McClard Antiques: painted on paper, card, ivory, silk or porcelain; painted in reverse on the back of glass; cut out with scissors or knives and pasted onto a contrasting, usually light-colored paper or fabric; and hollow cut, in which the image is cut away from the paper, which is then glued onto contrasting paper or fabric to create a reverse image.
