The Clements Family

Augustin Edouart’s most successful and popular silhouettes were his family conversation pieces. Often set against a watercolour wash background, as seen here, he often arranged his sitters in pairs giving them a prop that reflected their interests and personalities.

Here we meet the Clements Family of Ireland within their elegantly furnished drawing room. The father, Col. Henry John Clements, is reading a letter addressed Dear J— as he stands next to his eldest daughter, Selina, who has some sheet music. Mrs Clements, wearing a beribboned cap and fashionable dress, is seated centre stage opposite her artistic middle daughter, Louisa, who is clutching a paintbrush and painting. Completing the tableau is their only son and heir, Henry Theophilus (b.1820), holding his top hat and cane as he converses with the youngest daughter, Mary Isabella, with a little bird perched on her extended finger.

Henry John Clements (1781-1843) was MP for Leitrim between 1804 and 1818 and then MP for Cavan from 1840 until his death. He was also a Colonel in the Leitrim militia and High Sheriff. In 1811 he married Louisa Stewart and with her had six children though two daughters died young. Only Selina and young Henry went on to marry and have children. The family home was Ashfield Lodge in Co. Cavan; successive generations continued to live there until 1952 when the house was demolished.

The silhouette is signed and dated – Augn Edouart 1836. During that year Edouart returned to England having spent about three years working in Ireland so this must have been one of his final Irish commissions. Created on card affixed by the artist to a canvas stretcher for strength and stability, the silhouette is presented behind old wavy glass in its original bird’s eye maple veneer frame with gilt slip, as favoured and supplied by Edouart himself. The remnants of an old hand-written label on the back has enabled the sitters to be identified.

Largely in good condition, there is slight wrinkling and possible damage to the figure of Selina as well are some marks to the background card below the sitters’ feet.

As an ex-Bonapartist claiming asylum in Britain, Augustin Edouart (1789-1861) tried various business schemes before discovering he had a natural aptitude for cutting likenesses. He was so successful he toured extensively throughout the British Isles and later the USA cutting hundreds of thousands of silhouettes preserving a duplicate of each cutting in a personal archive which filled many large volumes, each profile meticulously annotated with the sitter’s name and the date. This would have become a truly fabulous historic record had it not been largely lost to the sea when Edouart’s ship en route to France was shipwrecked. Although the passengers were all rescued, Edouart’s possessions perished. No wonder he lost the will to work commercially thereafter.