Teeny 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 teeny dog. The cut silhouette (under 3 cm in height) is presented in a deep giltwood frame with convex glass. The frame has loss to the gilding on the side edges but this is not really noticeable when hung.

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 tiny cutting. The silhouette has stamp of authenticity on the reverse.