Thirty Years, and a Thank-You to Hubert Leslie

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?

How did you discover you could do this?

How I discovered my odd talent for cutting silhouettes is the question I get asked most often when working at events. I usually reply that I couldn’t find a teacher, so taught myself by adapting my drawing skills. This is true, but doesn’t address the question of what it really meant to teach myself.

Teaching yourself implies you don’t have a teacher. Oddly, however, I’ve always felt like I did have a teacher. It being my thirtieth anniversary this month, I find myself thinking a lot about a man I never met, but to whom I owe a huge debt of thanks. His name is Hubert Leslie, and I was introduced to his work by staff at the National Portrait Gallery archives office in the early 1990s. He’s still my favourite silhouettist today.

I’d like to describe how Hubert Leslie taught me to cut silhouettes, and what it feels like to learn from the work of a long-deceased artist.

An odd set of duplicate albums

I included Hubert Leslie in my recent article Famous Silhouette Artists. He worked on the West Pier at Brighton, on England’s south coast, cutting silhouettes throughout the 1920s and 30s. As soon as I discovered his work, I recognised him as a fellow street artist and was eager to know more.

On his death in 1976 he bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) a set of albums apparently containing copies of all his silhouettes. Today, these albums are kept in a basement at the NPG archives office.

The Gallery has recently embarked on an archiving project to digitise and identify (as far as possible) all these silhouettes. Given that most of his sitters were unknown holiday makers in Brighton, this seems impossible, yet this is what they’re attempting. You can read about this fascinating project on the NPG website Silhouette Sleuthing.

Discovering Hubert Leslie’s Silhouettes

I visited the NPG archives office after hearing about a large collection of silhouettes not on public display. As soon as I asked about it the staff brought up one of Leslie’s albums for me to look at.

They presented me with a large, heavy book, bound in red leather, containing page after page of black-paper, cut-out portraits. Some were in full length (which I had never seen before) but most were the familiar bust-length variety. All were cut from black-faced paper (white paper printed black on one side) and arranged in neat rows across the page. The silhouettes were all numbered and most were signed in pencil by the sitters. The book was old, rather battered, and needed careful handling. I was given a thin pair of white gloves to turn the pages with.

Asking a hundred questions…

Looking through this amazing album of shadow portraits I was immediately entranced, but also confused. How did these copies exist? Why hadn’t the sitters bought them? Leslie cannot have cut so many silhouettes just for his own amusement. How did he make a living?

I found myself asking a hundred such questions all at once. All the staff could tell me was that they were all copies of silhouettes cut on Brighton Pier, and that Hubert Leslie cut them with scissors. I would need to figure out the rest for myself.

Each portrait was smoothly and elegantly cut, with none of the choppiness of my own early silhouettes. Many had thin, tapered, slash lines cut into them, to indicate the arms of spectacles or the line of a trouser leg. I’d never seen this kind of work before.

How could this be achieved with scissors? I wondered. Some of the silhouettes were so lifelike, it seemed like they might turn to me and speak. How could they be so real?

Had Leslie cut them with a knife? The staff insisted not.
Had he drawn them out first? There was no sign of any pencil marks.
How long did they take? The poses seemed so natural and effortless.

I stayed for many hours, looking at the silhouettes and pondering these questions. I stayed too long, in fact, and was in trouble when I got home, having missed the children’s tea time. Yet, that evening, I picked up my scissors and cut a portrait of our then young daughter, Taz. It was by far the best silhouette I had ever cut.

…and having my questions answered

Over the next few months I made several visits to the Gallery. I began to make copies of Leslie’s silhouettes, at first by drawing them out, then soon afterwards by cutting them freehand. During this process, all my questions were answered, although I cannot really explain how. The answers just came to me and I knew them to be true. It seemed like the albums were speaking to me, guiding me. I had found my teacher! 

I learned that Leslie hardly turned his scissors at all. Instead, he kept them still and manoeuvred the paper into them with his left hand, the right hand gently opening and closing the scissors as he worked. This was how he achieved his smooth, flowing lines.

I learned that he enjoyed cutting meandering slash lines into his silhouettes, the edges being pulled apart on pasting onto card or into his books. This was how he created his tapered lines to indicate arms, legs, and spectacles.

I learned that he folded his paper – black side in – and worked on the white side, cutting through both sheets at once. This created two copies of each silhouette, facing in opposite directions.

Once finished, he pasted one copy onto a card, for the client, and the second into one of his albums, kept open by his side. Many of his sitters were children and their names are written underneath, often in childish handwriting. I found myself visualising the scene on Brighton’s West Pier – the children’s delight at their freshly-cut portraits, the joy with which they added their names to “the artist’s book” while their parents looked on. It was all so simple, and yet so elegant.

I realised this was street art at its very best. Both art and entertainment rolled into one.

Leaving Covent Garden

I have to confess, I can’t recall exactly when in 1996 I abandoned my street-art practice to become a full-time silhouettist. I recall it was a process. I gradually began to take more events bookings, often on weekends, which meant I was missing more and more days in Covent Garden. Looking back at my records I can see I went from three bookings in May 1996, to twelve in June. So June seems as good a month as any to mark the moment.

For at least a year afterwards I would head back to Covent Garden from time to time, usually on bank holidays or odd Sundays. The staff there knew me well and usually welcomed me back. When my Covent Garden days finally became a distant memory I would joke that I had no fear of events work drying up. I still had the sign board in my studio and knew I could earn a living anywhere in the world. I still keep it there today… just in case!

Keeping my own Duplicate Albums

Another part of the process was my decision to emulate artists like Hubert Leslie and August Edouart in keeping my own set of duplicate albums. I started Volume 1 at the beginning of 1996. Today, I’m working on volume 75. It’s a far larger collection of cuttings than those created by Hubert Leslie. Like him, most of my cuttings are of unknown people, albeit at known events. I cannot imagine a gallery one day trying to identity them all! There are a number of named notables contained within their pages: the late Queen Elizabeth II comes to mind – I keep a list somewhere.

Most silhouettists today don’t keep such records. To them, the work involved seems like an antiquated and unnecessary labour. Why bother with it?

Ostensibly, my reasons are the same as Leslie’s: to provide a replacement service in the event that a client wishes to replace a lost set of silhouettes, or purchase further copies to send to family and friends. However, I think I knew even in 1996 that any extra income this might generate would not really justify the time and expense involved.

Partly, it’s my art-school training, which instilled in us the importance of documenting one’s own work. But the real reason is perhaps more a homage to a man who taught me so much, but whom I was never able to thank. I had in mind that one day, perhaps long after I’m gone, a young, aspiring silhouettist will come across my own albums and begin to ask some questions.

“They look like they might turn to me and speak. How can they be so real?”

Thirty years feels like a milestone worth marking, hence this article. If you’ve been following my work for any part of those thirty years, I’d love to hear from you below. And if you’d like to see that list of notable sitters, just say the word.

More information about Hubert Leslie

• NPG: Hubert Leslie’s silhouettes collection
• Can a Shadow Survive a Fire?
• Book: Silhouettes and Scissor Cutting, by Hubert Leslie, 1939
• Book: Artful Art and Breathless Brainwaves, by Hubert Leslie, 1948
• Film: Silhouette Secrets