Silhouette
Origin
French, from Étienne de Silhouette †1767 French controller general of finances.
The word "silhouette" derives from the name of Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who, in 1759, was forced by France's credit crisis during the Seven Years War to impose severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy. Because of de Silhouette's austere economies, his name became eponymous with anything done or made cheaply and so with these outline portraits. Prior to the advent of photography, silhouette profiles cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a person's appearance.
The term "silhouette", although existing from the 18th century, was not applied to the art of portrait-making until the 19th century. In the 18th and early 19th century, “profiles” or “shades” as they were called were made by one of 3 methods: (1) painted on ivory, plaster, paper, card, or in reverse on glass; (2) “hollow-cut” where the negative image was traced and then cut away from light colored paper which was then laid atop a dark background; and (3) “cut & paste” where the figure was cut out of dark paper (usually free-hand) and then pasted onto a light background.
Definitions
- 1: a likeness cut from dark material and mounted on a light ground or one sketched in outline and solidly colored in
- 2: the outline of a body viewed as circumscribing a mass <the silhouette of a bird>
Description
A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Although the art form has been popular since the mid-18th century, the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades of the 19th century. Silhouette images may be created in any artistic media, but the tradition of cutting portraits from black card has continued into the 21st century.
From its original graphic meaning, the term "silhouette" has been extended to describe the sight or representation of a person, object or scene that is backlit, and appears dark against a lighter background. Anything that appears this way, for example, a figure standing backlit in a doorway, may be described as "in silhouette". Because a silhouette emphasises the outline, the word has also been used in the fields of fashion and fitness to describe the shape of a person's body or the shape created by wearing clothing of a particular style or period.[1]
