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This area is intended as an informal forum for sharing information primarily on British silhouettes, portrait miniatures and provincial art. Sometimes a previously unrecorded trade label on a silhouette or other new information on a listed portrait artist comes to light and these pages will allow me to share that information with other collectors and enthusiasts. This may also stimulate discussion so comments, corrections and additional information will always be welcome. Email: enquiries@wigsonthegreen.co.uk |
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LIST OF TOPICS John Dempsey,
character silhouettes |
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| GEORGE WHITE - silhouette artist and photographer | |
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When Mrs Jackson and Sue McKechnie published their respective silhouette reference books, little was known about the artist who stamped his work with this stencil. Recent research undertaken by Photo-Sleuth has now revealed some biographical details for him. The artist's full name was George White and he was born in 1810 in a small village near Matlock in Derbyshire. Whilst still a young child, the family moved to Chesterfield where George's father worked as a gardener. In 1834 George married a local girl, Ann Melbourne. |
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It is unclear when he began cutting silhouette likenesses professionally but in September 1835 at the age of twenty-five he had opened a shop in the centre of Manchester and in the Manchester Times and Gazette advertised 'Likenesses Cut With Scissors, in three minutes'. He set out his charges as:
By way of comparison, his contemporary John Gapp working in the popular resort of Brighton was charging 2s 6d for a full-length figure, 1s 6d for a dog, and a mere 5s for a horse. It seems George White was not under-selling his talents. The life of a silhouette artist of the time was usually an itinerant one and White was no exception. During 1835 he was working in Stockport before announcing his return to Manchester in August of that year. He is also known to have regularly visited the northern towns of Lancaster, Preston, Blackpool, Kirby Lonsdale and Kendal. |
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George White cut out his silhouettes and then bronzed or painted over them in watercolour. The stamped profile opposite of Ann Eliza Arkwright is a particularly fine example of his bust-length work. The profile is undated though, given the style of dress, would have been completed early in the artist's career. White's stencil stamp is more commonly seen on his full-length silhouettes. A recurring feature on these is the use of a background streak of Prussian blue to convey the sea. This feature appears to be unique to the work of George White and so unsigned examples can be confidently attributed to his hand. The gentleman (below left) is Thomas Sutcliffe, a shipbuilder of Greenock and, in homage to his profession, a sailing ship is visible on the horizon. Whether White ever journeyed as far north as Greenock is unclear. It may be that Mr Sutcliffe was holidaying in the Lake District when the profile was painted.
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When the demand for silhouette likenesses declined during the 1850s George White swapped his paint brush for a camera and took up professional photography. He continued to travel around northern England but always returned home to Blackpool, where he died in 1880 leaving a widow, and a son who did not follow in his father's footsteps. Acknowledgements January 2013 |
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John Dempsey was a journeyman artist working in England between the 1820s and the 1840s. He produced silhouettes and portraits in various styles but his series of likenesses of public characters are of particular interest as they give us a unique glimpse into everyday life in the towns and cities of Britain at that time. His earliest characters were painted in watercolour with delineated features but by the 1830s he was also cutting and painting his characters in the form of silhouettes. Dempsey was working at the time as Augustin Edouart and it is generally understood that it was Dempsey that Edouart had in mind when, writing in his Treatise, he criticised the use of gold and colour on profiles. The Tasmanian Art Gallery has recently identified a folio of Dempsey's characters within their collection. It was donated to them in 1956 by an Englishman working in Hobart who may have inherited them from an uncle in London known to have been a collector of nineteenth century art. The contents of the folio are tantalising: portraits of a tailor's assistant, a town crier, a gaol attendant, a buyer of rabbitskins, a lunatic, several beggars, and a whole array of street vendors selling everything from ribbons to muffins. Sadly the portraits are not yet on public display. Examples of Dempsey's characterful profiles are shown below. The 'Well-Known Whip-Seller in Liverpool' with his pockets stuffed with whips of all sizes has been cut and over-painted with gold with small touches of colour. It is signed and dated 1847. The 'Guard and Coachman of the Exeter Mail' is a larger portrait featuring three cut figures and making more use of colour. The pencil background shows the coaching inn with the mail coach ready to depart. It is cheekily inscribed 'Bipeds ... Species Peculiar ... nearly extinct'. 'The Bellman Dover' is interesting as an example of a profile with the features painted in full colour. By contrast the final example has been painted on card and is extensively gilded. Again it shows Dempsey's sense of humour as 'The One-Armed Bill-Poster of Manchester' with his pot of glue strapped to his shoulder appears to be getting ready to paste up an advert for the artist's likenesses. If anyone has other examples of Dempsey's 'characters' in their collection, I would be happy to add images, and any other information they might have, to this page so an archive of his work may be created. April 2012 ; updated May 2013 |
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The fashion-conscious young lady of the early 19th century would always wish to dress in the latest fashion if invited to a ball or a dance at the Assembly Room (were her town lucky enough to have one!). If a new gown was required she would peruse the latest ‘Pocket Book’, a combination diary, memorandum and almanack, with illustrations of the latest fashions and fabrics often the main part of the contents. Most evening dresses would be made up in silk, and silks, especially patterned silks, were relatively expensive.
It may have been for this reason alone that some young ladies took home any leftover off-cuts of their chosen dress fabric. Alternatively they may have wanted to have a memento of a favourite gown or even a wedding gown. These scraps were sometimes made up into small pin cushions in the form of shoes - shoes having long been seen as a symbol of luck connected with weddings. They were labours of love in an era of elegance, when young ladies had the time and patience for needlework. Sadly not many examples have survived.
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The handbill, printed in 1820* to advertise his arrival in the county town of Warwick, demonstrates how prolific an artist Gillespie was as he had already clocked up 17,000 likenesses. He toured the market towns from Northampton through the Midlands into Northern England and into the Scottish Borders. At each location he painted on average 500 profiles in a variety of styles. He was particularly busy in the fast-growing town of Preston where he painted nearly 1,100 likenesses but was less popular in Daventry where he only received 160 commissions. We don't know how many weeks Gillespie stopped in each town but we can imagine it would have been around two to four weeks in which case he would have needed to complete thirty to forty portraits each day in order to keep up with the demand. This was certainly possible according to his trade label that boasted that a likeness could be captured in just one minute (though this was probably just an outline profile that would have been finished later in the chosen style).
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| Gillespie's use of mechanical aids, in particular the Physiognograph, would have enabled him to achieve this quick turnaround time. It is to be assumed that device resembled the better-known Physiognotrace which was in turn based on the camera obscura. He also used a micrometer, a device for the precise measurement of small distances. In his handbill Gillespie claims this to be a "new optical contrivance of his own invention by which ... the most minute feature may be measured". |
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In their article Six Choices for the Sitter, Suzanne and Michael Payne detail six distinctive styles of profile offered by Gillespie whilst working in the United States: a simple silhouette with gum arabic highlights; a silhouette without gum arabic but with more watercolour detailing such as strands of hair and eyelashes; a monochrome profile with detailed facial features set against a dark backdrop; a traditional painted silhouette with gilding; a watercolour profile in full colour, the backdrop with brown and blue hatching to the sides; a less detailed full colour profile without any background shading. Most, if not all of these, can also be found in the earlier British examples of his work but, with the discovery of this handbill, a variant on the fully coloured profile has come to light in which the profile appears unfinished and is set against a backdrop of orange-brown and sometimes blue hatching as illustrated by the following examples (the profile on the left contained the handbill). The third example differs in that the dress is fully coloured, it has a bust-line, and the backdrop, whilst in the same colours, is patterned differently. At the same time there are enough similarities to make a convincing attribution to Gillespie. |
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| In addition to the trade label illustrated above and slight variants thereof, I have come across two other labels used by Gillespie whilst working in the British Isles: | |
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* The handbill is undated but has a partial watermark
date of [18]20. |
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Cynthia
McKinley
Wigs on the Green Fine Art, York Tel. +44 (0)1904 794711 Mobile: 07962 257915 Email: enquiries@wigsonthegreen.co.uk |
A
rare pair of pin cushion shoes from a Scottish castle