Silhouettes

Very Special Silhouette from the Scrapbook of Augustin Edouart Titled “How Do You Do”

  • The master silhouettist kept a scrapbook of figures he cut for his own amusement or perhaps to practice certain types of figures. If you have not read the write-up on this special collection of silhouettes, please use the link at the bottom of the listing for the Bios page and you will be amazed at the Master Silhouettist’s story. This pair of men (from his personal scrapbook. Animaux is a single piece of paper cut in miniature very similar to a conversation silhouette from Edouart's traveling exhibition, which he took and set up at each cutting location so people could see the great extent of his work. He shows another very similar silhouette in his Treatise on Silhouette Likenesses and describes it as

    No. 38:

    "Oh, How Do You Do? This is a familiar occurrence which every one is acquanted with. The English gentleman accosts his Paridian friend with the utmost cordiality apparently after a long separation. These attitudes at once declare the difference of nation, the Frenchman almost bent in two, is trying to extricate his hand from the warm grasp of his friend, and the expression of the faces show the anxiety they are in, to know what has occurred since they last met."
    This tiny conversation is not pictured, but is described in Edouart's book, as

    No. 39:

    "The Long Story, or 'Never Hold People by the Button.' The Frenchman and Englishman are again chosen as actors in this scene. The composed station the Englishman takes by resting on his umbrella, denotes that he is forced to listen to the last word fo the long story told by the Frenchman, who holds him by the button of his coat, and by the hand and position of his body, marks the determination he has made to finish what has has begun."

    A copy of Edouart's reprinted book comes with this extremely rare silhouette.

    #6904     $2,250

    References:

    Edouart, Augustin, A Treatise on Silhouette Likenesses, Longman & Co., Paternoster-Row; and J. Bolster, Patrick-Street, Cork, 1835.

    Jackson, Mrs. E. Nevill, Silhouettes A History and Dictionary of Artists, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1981 (published as an unabridged republication of Jackson’s Silhouette: Notes and Dictionary, Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1938), at 98-99.

    Please see the Silhouettist Bios page for more information about Edouart.