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 specialised in

silhouette A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...

portraits.

Biography

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 Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

. He remained there for three years, during which time he produced some 5,000 likenesses. Edouart travelled in the United States in about 1839–49, visiting New York,

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and other locales. He later returned to France, where he worked on smaller silhouettes. They included one of the most notable writers of this period,

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

Portraits

Edouart created portraits of hundreds of subjects, including: *Samuel Appleton and familyHistoric New England
Retrieved 2010-09-05 *

Fanny Brawne Frances "Fanny" Brawne Lindon (9 August 1800 – 4 December 1865) is best known as the fiancée and muse to English Romantic poet John Keats. As Fanny Brawne, she met Keats, who was her neighbour in Hampstead, at the beginning of ...

*Captain Edward BoltonMuseum of Fine Arts Boston collections
Retrieved 2010-09-05 *William Buckland, Frank Buckland *Charles Burroughs * Henry Clay *John Connell and family * Susan Edmonstone FerrierNational Galleries Scotland
. Retrieved 2010-09-05 *Samuel Freeman * Samuel Griswold Goodrich *

Sarah Josepha Hale Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (October 24, 1788April 30, 1879) was an American writer, activist, and editor of ''Godey's Lady's Book''. She was the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Hale famously campaigned for the creation of the ...

*Thaddeus Mason Harris *

Josiah Harlan Josiah Harlan, Prince of Ghor (June 12, 1799 – October 1871) was an American adventurer who travelled to Afghanistan and Punjab with the intention of making himself a king. During his travels, he became involved in local politics and facti ...

*Robert Knox *

Francis Lieber Francis Lieber (March 18, 1798 or 1800 – October 2, 1872), known as Franz Lieber in Germany, was a German-American jurist, gymnast and political philosopher. He edited an '' Encyclopaedia Americana''. He was the author of the Lieber Code duri ...

*Liston, comedian *

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely tran ...

*John Loudoun McAdam *John Moss (see American Collector Magazine September 1943) *Stephen Olin *

Theophilus Parsons Theophilus Parsons (February 24, 1750October 30, 1813) was an American jurist. Life Born in Newbury, Massachusetts to a clergyman father, Parsons was one of the early students at the Dummer Academy (now The Governor's Academy) before matricu ...

* Samuel Jarvis Peters *

Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy ...

Daniel Webster Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress and served as the U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents William Henry Harrison ...

Image gallery

Image:Jane Anderson; Esther Ainslie; Helena Anderson; Mrs Arkley; Charles Atherton by Augustin Edouart.jpg, Jane Anderson; Esther Ainslie; Helena Anderson; Mrs Arkley; Charles Atherton (National Portrait Gallery, London) Image:Brooklyn Museum - Cut Silhouette of Four Full Figures - August Edouart.jpg, Cut Silhouette of Four Full Figures, 19th century (Brooklyn Museum) Image:ColinGibb CharlesGibb byAugustEdouart BrooklynMuseum.png, Colin Gibb and Charles Gibb, 19th century (Brooklyn Museum) Image:HWLongfellow byAugustEdouart Boston.png, H.W. Longfellow, 19th century Image:AbbottLawrence ParkSt Boston byAugustEdouart 19thc.png,

Abbott Lawrence Abbott Lawrence (December 16, 1792, Groton, Massachusetts – August 18, 1855) was a prominent American businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He was among the group of industrialists that founded a settlement on the Merrimack River that ...

and family, no.5 Park St., Boston, 19th century

Collections

Works by Edouart reside in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London; National Galleries of Scotland;

Crawford Art Gallery The Crawford Art Gallery ( ga, Áiléar Crawford) is a public art gallery and museum in the city of Cork, Ireland. Known informally as the Crawford, it was designated a 'National Cultural Institution' in 2006. It is "dedicated to the visual arts ...

, Cork; New York Historical Society;NY Historical Society
Retrieved 2010-09-05 Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Historic New England; and the

American Jewish Historical Society The American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) was founded in 1892 with the mission to foster awareness and appreciation of American Jewish history and to serve as a national scholarly resource for research through the collection, preservation an ...

, New York.

Exhibitions

''The Art of the Silhouette in 19th-century Cork''
which included works by Edouart, Stephen O’Driscoll (c.1825-1895), and miniature portraits of members of the Crawford Family, was held at

Cork Cork or CORK may refer to: Materials * Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product ** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container ***Wine cork Places Ireland * Cork (city) ** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...

in 2015. "Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now", which included works by Edouart, Moses Williams, and others, held at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. May 31, 2018 to March 10, 2019, and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham AL, September 28, 2019 to January 12, 2020.

References

External links

*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
*

22 silhouettes
by Edouart {{DEFAULTSORT:Edouart, Augustin-Amant-Constant-Fidele 1789 births 1861 deaths American portrait painters French portrait painters 1840s in the United States People from Dunkirk Silhouettists