THE ENGLISH SILHOUETTISTTE April Fielding (her description, not mine) is a shadowy character. Until this month, I didn’t even know her name! I only recognised a series of very fine postcard silhouettes, made in the 1900s, embedded in graphite and initialled “AF”.
…April Fielding, the Crystal Palace SilhouettistteRead More »
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 mid 1950s.
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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!
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WHO ON EARTH was Mrs Ames? It’s a good question. Considering that only one pair of silhouettes painted by her has ever been identified, researchers have written a surprising amount about this artist (or artists).
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BAJ B. IS ONE of my favourite silhouettists. I’ve learned a lot from looking at the best of their silhouettes (I’ve no idea whether Baj was male or female, so will use the non-gendered third person). At their best there are silhouettes I would struggle emulate.
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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 who spent his whole life in Liverpool, and never tried to draw much attention to himself.
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SAMUEL ANDREWS’ rather ghostly white en-grisaille cameos occupy that strange overlap between silhouette and portrait miniature.Some love them while others find them rather creepy. Technically, a soon as an artist paints the face, they are no longer working in silhouette. However, he was one of the artists I looked at while developing my own range of en-grisaille portraits.
…Samuel Andrews: cameo profiles of the British RajRead More »
THE FRENCHMAN known as “Monsieur Adolphe” seems to have been quite a character in Brighton. Was he responsible for the myth that silhouettes were a traditional French art?
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SILHOUETTES ARE FAMOUS for being black, but very few are actually made by a blacksmith. Carl Ackerlund, from Minnesota, USA was such a man: a blacksmith silhouettist.
…Carl Ackerlund, blacksmith silhouettist from MinnesotaRead More »
THE ADELAIDE GALLERY is more famous for its innovations in Daguerreotype than for silhouette cutting. Nevertheless, a number of silhouettists seem to have worked there. The London gallery was active in the mid nineteenth century.
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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 possible? I thought they must be hallucinating.
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LAST WEDNESDAYI picked up an eighteenth-century silhouette by Isabella Beetham. Beetham is a well-known Georgian artist and her work is much prized by collectors today. She is something of a feminist icon.
She is one of very few eighteenth-century female artists to build a successful career in the male-dominated art world of her time. I came across this silhouettes at an auction, part of the estate of a well-known collector and art historian. I was lucky enough to place a winning bid.
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