The Sad Silhouette of French Politics

WATCHING THE PRECARIOUS political situation currently unfolding in France I’m reminded of the origin of the word silhouette. I’m acutely aware that those who know me well will tease me about this. They’ll tell you that absolutely everything reminds me of silhouettes!

However, in this instance I feel certain that the parallels between then and now are obvious for all to see.

Then and now: a problem of budgets

Etienne de Silhouette was appointed in March 1759 as the contrôleur-général of France by the French King Louis XV. At the time, the national finances of France were in a terrible state – characterised by ballooning spending and an unfair tax system – and it was de Silhouette’s job to sort them out. Sadly for him, it was an impossible task and one which rapidly made him one of the most unpopular men in France.

Years of wars with both the English and the Prussians meant that the French government was recklessly overspending just to pay the troops. At the same time, the lack of an efficient tax system meant that only a portion of the population, generally the poorest, paid any tax at all. Those who did pay were massively over taxed, which meant that hiding one’s wealth from the French taxman was widely considered both normal and a necessity to live a comfortable life.

The result of all this was a chronic national annual deficit and the burgeoning debt of the French state. It had become quite impossible to balance the books or pass anything resembling a sensible national budget.

Does any of this sound familiar today? Is it just me feeling a sense of deja vu?

Etienne de Silhouette

At the age of 50, de Silhouette was an unlikely candidate for the role of contrôleur-général, coming as he did from relatively humble origins in Limoges. However, he worked his way up through the French educational system and became known as a brilliant writer and observer of both philosophical and political matters. In his 30s he spent a number of years in London studying the British tobacco trade and there formed the opinion that the British tax system was far superior to the French.

He wrote a number of treatises on the subject of tax which came to the attention of the French political establishment. This helped a slow but steady rise in his own political fortunes. It’s tempting to think that the top job was offered to him because nobody else was foolish enough to take it, but I’m certain de Silhouette was intelligent enough to realise this. Perhaps he truly believed he could make a difference!

De Silhouette’s manifesto was simple: to curb all unnecessary expenditure and bring a renewed sense of order to public revenue.

His proposal to achieve this initially involved removing tax immunity from a large of number of wealthy French citizens and government officials, as well as cancelling a variety of pensions (and other government handouts) which he considered obsolete. A few months later he began doubling the tax on an ever-growing list of luxury goods, considered essential by many. This list included gold and silver plates, jewellery, carriages (and the horses to pull them), silk, velvet and braids.

In the summer of 1759 Voltaire received a letter from his friend the Marquise du Deffand, who wrote:

“They are not taxing the air we breathe, but aside from that I cannot think of anything which escaped!”

All things à la silhouette

The Marquise wasn’t alone. De Silhouette’s various measures caused outrage across the whole of France. People complained that nobody could afford anything of quality any more. Everybody had been reduced to buying cheap and economical goods more suited to the working classes. In France they say that Madame de Pompadour, wishing to mock De Silhouette for his concern over the cost of her having a portrait painted, laughingly proclaimed:

“Let the artist paint me most economically. Just the outline, that will be enough!”

The marmot probably had in the mind the cheap and unattractive “shades” or shadow portraits beginning to make their way across the Channel from England at the time. The joke stuck and these small black shadows, in their sombre black frames, were gleefully mocked all across France as being portraits à la silhouette! It became a way for the French to express their absolute contempt for anything so cheap, dull, devoid of artistic sensibility and (let’s face it) just plain English.

Resignation and aftermath

De Silhouette would, no doubt, have argued that all his measures were necessary to put the country’s finances back on an even keel. However, the anger and hatred he generated was absolute. In November 1759, barely nine months after taking office, de Silhouette tended his resignation. His mission had failed and the government had been forced (not for the first time) to raid the coffers of both royal court and church in a vain effort to balance the books. This resulted in the loss of many French artistic masterpieces and was a humiliation from which he could not recover.

After his resignation no subsequent contrôleur-général was brave enough to try such drastic measures again. At least, not for another 30 years and the French Revolution of 1789.

An odd rumour: was Etienne an artist?

Over the years, collectors of silhouettes portraits – perhaps dismayed by the unalloyed derision implied by the very word – have sought an alternate explanation as to why de Silhouette’s name should be applied to this art. Some have perpetuated the odd rumour that de Silhouette himself was a fan of, or even a talented amateur cutter of, silhouettes. If you google his name, or the origin of the silhouette, you will find various odd versions of this story out there. If you ask ChatGPT, it’ll make one up for you!

However, in nearly 30 years of collecting, reading about and generally immersing myself in the world of silhouettes, I have never once come across a silhouette purported to be cut by Etienne de Silhouette. Since he passed away in 1767, just a few years after leaving office, his death predates the era when cutting (rather than painting) silhouettes became the accepted manner of making them. For this reason I have sadly concluded that all such stories, attractive though they are, are just eighteenth-century fake news. De Silhouette never once cut a silhouette.

It would be another sixty years until another Frenchman, the silhouettist August Edouart, reclaimed the word as his own and introduced to the English-speaking world his own vastly superior “portraits à la silhouette”. But that’s another story! Meanwhile, I’d love you to comment below whether you feel, like me, that the current state of French politics bears an uncanny resemblance to that of 1759.