Scientific minds have ponderously traced the silhouette in Persian and Turkish art. They call our attention to the fact that Egyptian hieroglyphics are conventionalized silhouettes with full-faced eyes in profile faces. Indeed, so seriously do they trail the collateral branches in cameos and bas-reliefs, that I await a thesis on “A Comparative Study of the Silhouette Value of my Hearth Rug.” I can even fancy a theological monograph tracing a relationship between the practice of preserving the silhouette and the ancient superstition that a man who lost his shadow lost his soul …
It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that the little black figures got their distinctive name. The art had been called “profile-cutting,” “cut-paper-work,” “Shadowography;” Étienne Silhouette, Controller-General of France in the time of Louis XV., who fathered the term “silhouettes.” This man was infamous then, and is famous now, for trying to put the country on a sound economic basis. He translated English financial writings, cut down royal pensions, preached thrift, and thus made himself generally unpopular. His frugal amusement was taking the profiles of his friends with a camera obscura or profile-machine – frugal, because this mechanical contrivance had brought down the price of silhouettes, while reducing their artistic value.
Excerpted from ‘Shadows of the War,’ by Mary Alden Hopkins. Appeared in Everybody’s Magazine, volume XXXV, July-December 1916. Published by the Ridgeway Company.