TOP ROW
Edouart,The
Artist's Children 1828 ; A Page of Objects ; Silhouette
landscape c1920; Couple at leisure c1927; Lavater's Treatise on
Physiognomy, interpretation of the profile.
BOTTOM ROW.
Lavater's Treatise, taking a silhouette Portrait; from
Lavater, Physiognomy, the artist's chair; Limomachia,
a machine for taking likenesses; Schmalcalder's Profile Machine,
patent drawing 1806.
The Silhouette
had a claim to represent the origin of art, when a woman traced her
lover's profile on the wall shortly
before his departure. It was a sizeable and now neglected industry
which relied upon manual dexterity of the cutting after drawing. There
is a long tradition of cut paper arts, culminating perhaps in the articulated
animation figures of Lotte Reiniger.
In a recent
lecture David Watkin showed how he shot a scene for a film of Rossini's
Cenerentola as if it were an eighteenth century silhouette.
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