Articles about original research I’ve carried out into the lives and work of previously unrecorded silhouette artists in my collection.
JUNE 1996, exactly thirty years ago, was an important moment in my life. I finally found the courage to leave my weekend street-artist stall in Covent Garden, which had helped support my young family for so long, and embark on a full-time career as a silhouettist. What a crazy notion! What was I thinking?
COLLECTING OLD SILHOUETTES can sometimes make me feel I’m in a late-night TV detective series. The tendency of street artists to never sign their own work has led me on many a wild-goose chase!
WHEN LOOKING FOR examples of Parisian street silhouettes, the name Felily Odzikowski comes up again and again. However, all I know about him comes from the large number of his silhouettes I’ve collected over the years.
AS OCTOBER IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH I feel inspired to tell the story of William Hamlet (1749–1822), a successful silhouettist working from studios in both Bath and Salisbury from the 1780s until around 1820. He referred to himself as a “profile painter” and is an artist I would love to have had a conversation with.
OVER THE YEARS I’ve collected a small number of painted silhouettes made by a French artist called Max Noël. All I know about him comes from his silhouettes, which are elusive and hard to find.
JOHN MIERS is one of my favourite artists. I find there is still much to be learned about the art of painting silhouettes from studying his work. He worked from a studio at 111 Strand, London, and is known amongst the silhouette-collecting fraternity as the finest silhouettist of the eighteenth century.
BURIED IN MY COLLECTION are a number of silhouettes by Henry Harrison (or Henri, as he called himself when working in France).
WATCHING THE NEWS of Russian forces rolling into Ukraine a fortnight ago I was embarrassed to realise just how little I knew about the country. I had to look it up on a map! What’s the history, I wondered. Why is this happening? I found I knew almost nothing about either Ukrainian culture or history.
OTHO BARDEN was an American artist who cut silhouettes during the summer season at the popular tourist attraction of Rock City at the top of Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He seems to have worked there for many years, probably from the opening of Rock City in 1932 until the early 1960s.
WHEN GOOGLING “Audax” all you’ll find is information about long-distance cycle racing. However, Audax was also a silhouettist with a career spanning over 40 years. This is why I refer to him as the long-distance silhouettist!
IT’S ONLY BY an accident of history that anybody knows anything about the silhouettist William Allport at all. He was a workman-like artist…
THE FRENCHMAN known as “Monsieur Adolphe” was quite a character. Was he responsible for the myth that silhouettes are a French art?
I HEARD ABOUT Inger Eidem long before I knew her name. Whilst cutting silhouettes at events I’d occasionally meet people who’d tell me about silhouettes they had done in their childhood. Apparently the artist cut through two pieces of paper at the same time, one of which became a portrait and the other a caricature. Wait, what?! Is that even
AS AN ARTIST interested in science I’m aways fascinated by weird pseudo-scientific ideas of the past, especially if they involve silhouettes. One which caught my eye recently concerns a contraption known as Prosopographus. It really got me thinking!
AFTER WATCHING Silhouette Secrets, people sometimes ask what sparked my interest in silhouettes. It isn’t such an easy question to answer. However, my mind often returns to this silhouette, which has been in my family for years. It may well be the first silhouette I ever saw.
I RECENTLY CAME ACROSS the work of a talented silhouettist called Sarah Harrington. She was a professional silhouettist who worked during the latter part of the eighteenth century. What struck me most about about her work (apart from her obvious love of hats) is that they’re all cut inside-out!
