Historical Time Period
<1600 1700 1800 1900 2000>

Silhouettes are also known as paper cuttings and shadows. Long before photography was invented, our ancestors used to have portraits of themselves taken sideways. They were called silhouette portraits, and they were not taken with a camera, but were cut out of thin black paper, and stuck upon a white card. The word silhouette comes from the name of Monsieur Etienne de Silhouette, a French Minister of Finance in 1759.
 

Until a few years ago men might often have been seen in the streets of Boston and other big cities, who for a penny, would cut out a silhouette portrait of anyone who cared to stand before them for a few minutes. These portraits were about the size of a small photograph, and were often very good likenesses. Of course, these portraits were more or less accurate as side views of the face, according to the skill of the man who cut them out. If he had much artistic ability they were good likenesses; if not, they were sometimes very poor.
 

But in still earlier days, when silhouette portraits were fashionable and popular, they used to be done in a more scientific way. The person whose portrait was to be taken sat sideways before a screen, with a light on a table on the other side of him, and in this way a clear shadow was thrown upon the screen, which gave a perfect portrait if the light and sitter were arranged properly.

The eighteenth century is widely regarded as the renaissance of silhouettes. Little known though is that English silhouettes in those days were generally painted, not cut-out. A life-size cut-out was usually taken from the subject's shadow, which was used as an artist's cartoon. From this the finished silhouette was then made, using a reducing instrument known as a pantograph, or "stork's beak". This is why, to this day, artists talk of "taking" a silhouette, rather than drawing or cutting it. In much the same way that photographers "take" a photograph.
 

The skill of the best artists lay in the painting. This was done with soot, or lamp black, on plaster or glass. After painting the face dead black the hair, hats, ribbons, frills, and other essential accessories of the day, would have been "dragged" out, using a fine brush with progressively more and more diluted pigment.