The Frisky Dog

One of Augustin Edouart’s stylistic traits was to give his sitters tiny cut eyelashes. This applied also to his canine friends including this lively spaniel captured mid-bounce. The silhouette is presented in a bird’s eye maple veneer frame with a gilt slip. Both the frame and the slip have gappy joints and there is minor loss to the veneer on a couple of the corners.

Although best known for his individual silhouettes of people, Augustin Edouart (1788-1861) also cut family conversation pieces, often with the family dog. Alongside an archive of his work, he also kept scrapbooks in which he pasted practice and experimental cuttings. Unfortunately these scrapbooks and his archive volumes were mostly all lost at sea when Edouart was shipwrecked off the coast of Guernsey in 1829. Some years ago a salvaged scrapbook came to light in a Parisian bookshop and this is the source of this unique cutting. The silhouette carries a stamp of authenticity on the backing card.