August Amant Constant Fidèle Edouart, Mrs John Probyn. Gloster, 28th November 1836
French School

Silhouette portrait of a woman

Presented by Mrs. F. Nevill Jackson.

The work of August Edouart, the brilliant French Silhouettist,
is well known to connoissseurs. Practising his art chiefly in
the British Isles and in America, he has left behind him the most
remarkable series of authentic pictorial documents which has ever
been bequeated to the world.
"Not only did this painstaking artist write on every portrait
the full name of his sitter, date when taken, home address and
place where taken, but he frequently pasted cuttings from con-
temporary news-sheets in his reference folios.
"Eduoart cut each portrait in duplicate from folden black
paper. Placing one of the originals in a folio, he added the name
of his sitter, date, and place where taken, just as a modern photo-
grapher keeps his negatives for reference ; he used his volumes
also for exhibition purposes. Edouart thus accumulated an enor-
mous number of interesting portraits, not only of Kings and
Princes, such as those beautiful portraits taken by him at Holy-
rood Palace in 1831, but one of the 'landed gentry and aristocracy,'
whose houses he visited, and also the humbler folk who thronged
his studio when he worked in a town or village."---- F. NEVILL
JACKSON.
The titles and descriptions given to E. 2421-2470 are those
written in autograph by Eduoart on the back of each silhouette.'

E.2452-1913