Paper Cutting Patterns by Auguste Edouart

Ad from New York Tribune, 1913.

      Auguste Amant Constant Fidèle Edouart (1789–1861) was a French-born portrait artist who worked in England, Scotland and the United States in the 19th-century. He specialized in silhouette portraits.

      "Born in Dunkerque, he left France in 1814, and established himself in London, where he began his career making portraits from hair. In 1825, he began work as a silhouette portraitist, taking full-length likenesses in profile by cutting out black paper with scissors. Edouart spent fifteen years touring England and in 1829 arrived in Edinburgh. He remained there for three years, during which time he produced some five thousand likenesses." Edouart travelled in the United States ca.1839-1849, visiting New York, Boston, and other locales. He later returned to France where he worked on smaller silhouettes. They included one of the most notable writer of this period, Victor Hugo.

Old Silhouette Present To Taft

Paper Likeness of President Tyler Made by Artist Edouart in 1841.

      Washington, June 28. --Mrs. E. Nowell Jackson, related to President Tyler, has presented to President Taft the original silhouette portrait of President Tyler, made by the artist, Auguste Edouart, in Washington, in 1841. It will be placed in the White House collection of presidential portraits.

      Mrs. Jackson has always been interested in silhouettes, the old black profile portraits of the eighteenth century.

      Six years ago she picked up a rare treatise on the art written by Auguste Edouart, a Frenchman, who toured in Great Britain and the United States, and cut the picture in black paper of every king, queen, princess, president and senator in any town he visited.

I've restored the silhouette to a facsimile from the very tiny version you see in a photo scan of the original newspaper.

Related Content:

• WorldCat. Edouart, Augustin-Amant-Constant-Fidèle 1789-1861
• Smithsonian. Auguste Edouart Self-Portrait, 1843
• Flickr. Portrait by Edouart of Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788–1879)
• Library of Congress. Silhouette profile of artist Charles Fenderich, by Edouart
• Flickr. Work by Edouart
• Flickr. Silhouette in clasp of velvet choker