The Silhouettes of Dunham Tavern

By Duncan A. Virostko, Museum Assistant

Amongst the many pieces of 19th century art which grace the walls of Dunham Tavern, several stand out as unique. Sombre outlines of long past men and women stand in relief, catching the visitor’s eye and drawing them closer with their ghostly visages.

*Auguste Edouart cutting a Silhouette of Liston the Actor,* Auguste Edouart, French, 1827

These works are profiles, now better known as Silhouettes, after the French politician whose hobby was making them. As the name suggests, they are outlines of long past people, cut from pieces of black paper by a keen artist observing the sitter against the background of a light source. A skillful artist could make one in just a few minutes, and the materials involved were low cost. Thus, having one's profile done was a more economical way of having a portrait done than an oil painting. Making profiles was both a popular hobby and technique of professional artists during the 19th century, especially among the often itinerant artists of the young United States. Cutting profiles filled a market niche which was later filled by photography, which would largely supplant it from the 1850s onward. Thus, these works preserve a snapshot of early American art, fashion and society.

Two of these pieces are located in Dunham’s Keeping Room, the first room a guest enters during a visit. They are portraits executed by artist Samuel Metford, an English-American artist. Metford was born in Glastonbury, England, in 1810, the son of a Quaker. He learned the art of profile cutting there, although only one work from his earliest period survives. This is a portrait of his father, Joseph Metford. This perhaps unsurprising as profile cutting was then a popular hobby, and it is unlikely the young man worked professionally as an artist at the time. In 1834, he moved to the United States, and eventually became a citizen. He worked in Connecticut, New York, South Carolina, and other states as an itinerant artist as was common at the time. In 1844, he decided to return to England. Much of his subsequent work appears to have been in Scotland, centered around Edinburgh and Glasgow. This was likely motivated by the large number of intermarried Quaker families living in the region at the time. He would only return briefly to the United States, between 1865 and 1867. He would eventually pass away in 1896 in Weston-super-Mare, England.

Although regarded primarily as a British artist, he is more accurately characterized as a British-American artist as fully half of his career was in the early United States, and he was a citizen at that time. Metford's career stands as an example of the critical role that immigrants have played in the United States since its earliest period. Our culture would be poorer for a lack of his presence, and the relaxed attitude of the nation towards immigration allowed him to add his artistic contribution to the culture of the early republic.

*Profile of a Woman,* Samuel Metford, English, 11/26/1845

The first of the two profiles is signed “Sam Metford fect. S’hool 11th month 26 1845” and depicts a young woman of the period. Typical of his full length profiles, the woman’s silhouette is embellished using Chinese white, and gold paint. Metford uses the white to pick out the fine details of the silk of the womans lace collar and her bonnet, even showing the outline of her ear through the sheer fabric. Metford also uses the same technique to detail the embroidery and structure of the woman’s dress. The silhouette is then placed upon a pre-printed background, common to many other Metford pieces, which depicts an ornate garden with a prominent stone urn. Metford appears to have used a light grey watercolor to then create a shadow for the figure on top of this pre-made background. The result is the piece appearing to be one, rather than two, pieces of paper. Gold paint is used to pick out details on the book the woman is holding as well as the cameo she wears around her neck. Given the date and quality of this work, it is likely that the subject of this portrait is either an Northern English or Scottish woman, who was middle class (thus able to afford a full length profile with embellishment, but not a oil portrait), and well educated (hence her depiction with a book).

*Profile of a Man*, Samuel Metford, English, ca. 1845

The second Samuel Metford profile again uses one of his stock backgrounds, this time of a drawing room of an ornate house, with a steamship visible through a window overlooking a mountainous bay. The motif of a ship seen through a window is archetypal for Metford’s works. The piece is signed “Samuel Metford fecit.”, but is undated. However, the style of the high collar, cravat and double-breasted frock coat of the man suggest it was also made sometime in the mid to late 1840s. Metford again uses China White, this time to accentuate the man's dress shirt sleeve collars, and to embellish details of the man's hair, face and clothes. Judging by the subject’s slightly rounder chin and receding hairline, the man seems to be middle aged as well as middle class. The silhouette itself is slightly proud of the surface of the background lending a greater dimensionality to the image. Notably, the heels of the man’s shoes are also disproportionately small, a characteristic quirk of Metford’s works.

Dr. Samuel Patterson, Auguste Edouart, French, ca. 1840s

More profiles are on display in the Parlor, adjoining the keeping room at Dunham Tavern. One of these, a full length silhouette entitled “Dr. Samuel Patterson”, depicts an bespectacled older man holding a bottle of what is presumably medicine. In spite of being named, I have been unable to confirm the identity of the good doctor. However, his portrait is unique in having been executed by one of the most prominent profile artists of the 19th century, Auguste Edouart.

As one might guess from his name, Edouart was a Frenchman, born in Dunkerque in 1789. Living through the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, he served in Napoleon’s army. In 1814, following France’s defeat, he ironically moved to London, England. There he began his career making art out of hair.

In 1825, he took up profile portraiture, and in 1829 arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland. There, he made profiles of many famous persons, most notably the exiled Charles X of France and Sir Walter Scott. From 1839 to 1849, he also traveled the United States, setting up headquarters at 114 Broadway, New York, New York but traveling far and wide including a trip in 1841 to Columbus, Ohio.

*Self Portrait,* Auguste Edouart, French, ca. 1840

A self portrait of Edouart from this period made in Philadelphia shows him with shoulder length wavy hair and a distinctive curly beard. By depicting himself in this style, Edouart intentionally draws parallels between himself and earlier Grecco-Roman artists. Auguste would later return to France, likely because of the restoration of the French Republic under Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon. During this period he made a profile of famous writer Victor Hugo. Other famous persons Edouart depicted included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, David Dixon Porter, and Francis Liber. Edouart died in 1861, having retired from art in the 1850s.

*Andrew Jackson,* William Henry Brown, American, 1844

Another nearby profile casts an unmistakable shadow: that of President Andrew Jackson, an ironic figure given the politics of Rufus Dunham, who would have opposed him. This is actually a widely reproduced lithograph facsimile of a profile done by William Henry Brown in 1844. Brown was born in 1808 in Charleston, South Carolina, but later moved to Philadelphia. Since childhood, Brown had practiced profile cutting as a hobby, and carried on the practice as a career for many years, traveling the early United States. Brown had the advantage over his contemporaries of having an eidetic memory, which allowed him to render faithful representations of persons or objects from a single glance. Other American notables depicted by Brown included Chief Justice John Marshall, Congressmen Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, & John C. Calhoun, and Presidents John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, Martin Van Buren & Zachary Taylor.

*De Witt Clinton & Train*, William Henry Brown, American, 1831

Brown initially trained as an engineer, working on early American railroads. In 1870 he would publish the book The History of the First Locomotives in America, recording his and others recollections of American railroads in the embryonic forms in the 1830s. Notably, he was a passenger on the first run of a steam locomotive in New York, the De Witt Clinton, on August 11th, 1831 between Albanay and Schenectady on the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, and made a sketch of the occasion which he later turned into a profile. The profile itself depicts the locomotive De Witt Clinton pulling two passenger cars which were formerly horse drawn. The actual length of the train however was six cars, the original artwork being abbreviated for want of space on the letter on which it was hastily sketched. In these earliest days of rail travel, the experience was the antithesis of refined. The cars were little more than stagecoaches placed upon rails, coupled together with loose chains, which nearly catapulted passengers from their seats every time the train started. The lack of spark arrestors on locomotive smoke stacks combined with the outside roof seating in the manner of stagecoaches on the cars to produce a hail of sparks and cinders under which no parasol or outfit could escape being burned. Yet, the speed and novelty of these early rail excursions made them both memorable and worth the attendant discomfort. Brown remained active as an professional artist until 1859, at which point photography had eclipsed the art of taking profiles. He continued in his work on railroads, retiring in the late 1860s. He passed away in 1883, last of the great American profile cutters.

Profile of Man, ca. 1810

The last three profiles that a visitor encounters at Dunham Tavern are, unfortunately, the works of some long gone anonymous masters. Close inspection, however, indicates that the three figures depicted are from an earlier date than all other profiles in the collection. This is evident because of their mode of dress, the styles dating them to sometime around 1810 to 1820. The first, an elderly gentleman, wears a large ruffled cravat of the type popular during the 1810s, although his advanced age and double chin suggest that he was a late adherent to that style. The profile is embellished using the same China white technique as used by Metford, to highlight the details of his coat and hair.

Profile of Woman, ca. 1810

The second piece is of a woman, elegantly arrayed in an elaborate silk bonnet with tightly curled hair. The piece is elaborately embellished to achieve this effect, suggesting a very skilled artist indeed executed it. The style of her clothing matches the gentleman’s clothes, being of the period sometime between the 1790s and 1810s. An older woman, the image is a companion to the older gentleman in the first profile and likely his wife.

Profile of Man, ca. 1820

In contrast the third piece is of a younger, perhaps middle aged man wears a much smaller cravat with a high collar white shirt with complex ruffles on it’s breast, and a striped waist coat paired with his coat. This suggests a date of sometime in the 1820s. This piece is not nearly as embellished as its counterpart. However, it is unique in that it is the only reverse cut profile in the collection. In the reverse cut method, rather than cutting a positive space profile out of a black piece of paper, the profile artist cuts out the negative space of a profile on a white sheet of paper, then lays the white piece of paper over a black background. This technique was particularly prior to the 1820s, as black dyed paper was not yet commonly available.

The profiles in Dunham Tavern’s collection, and the artists who executed them, are a fascinating view into the world of the 1820s through 1840s in the United States. What can we learn from their stories? We firstly should recognize the importance of so-called “low art” versus “high art” for its invaluable role in capturing and preserving historic images that might not otherwise be deemed worthy of depiction. For much of the period in which it was practiced, the art of making profiles, or whatever one of the multitude other names it goes by that one prefers to use, was looked down on as it was avidly practiced by those who otherwise had no formal artistic training. Because profiles were quick and cheap to produce, they were seen by other artists as requiring little skill. In reality, producing a good profile requires exceptional artistic skill and practice.

Without profiles, however, invaluable cultural and historic knowledge from the early United States would have been lost to the ages. Profile artists depicted everything from common folk to great men and women of the age, and ranged in subject from portraits and landscapes to technical drawings. If the purpose of art is to contribute to the existing and future culture of society, then profile artists by volume alone made greater contributions than many other “great” artists of the same period ultimately did.

It is also important to note that several of the artists profiled in the article were not originally born in the United States. They were from diverse backgrounds, and made important cultural contributions to our society. In a time where the very concept of immigration, and indeed even birthright citizenship, are under assault we would do well to recall that our emergent nation would have suffered greatly culturally, economically, and politically if it were not for the largely non-existent immigration laws and enforcement of the period. The United States’ greatest strength has always been its diversity, and to deny that is to deny not only the past, but also justice in the present day.