Relaxing with a Magazine

Augustin Edouart is best known for his full-length cut silhouettes and family conversation pieces complemented sometimes, as here, by sepia watercolour backgrounds. Seated before a window, the stout gentleman is reading a paper with the letters MAGAZI- visible across the top – the paper is also part of the cut work. Behind him stands his wife in a dress with eye-catching demi-gigot sleeves, her hair upswept in a fashionable Apollo knot. Comparison with figures in an archive album of Edouart’s Irish cuttings has revealed the identity of the gentleman to be Mr Stokes.

The couple are situated in an elegant drawing room furnished with fringed drapes, a chaise longue and framed paintings. The silhouette is signed along the bottom edge – Aug. Edouart fecit 1834.

Records show that Edouart was working in Ireland during 1834 initially in the tourist hot spots of Kinsale and Killarney before moving on to Cork where he was often the guest of the Smith-Barry family of Fota Island. An editorial in the Cork Commercial Courier praised him as ‘a very rare talent’ with the ‘consummate power of a master’ (1 Nov. 1834).

The silhouette is presented in the original handsome bird’s eye maple veneer frame with a gilt slip. It is in excellent condition.

Having come to England from France around 1814, Augustin Edouart initially established himself as a hairwork artist specialising in dog pictures. These though were time-consuming to create and so could not give him a good enough living even with his wife working as a child-minder. The couple’s next venture was a shop in Cheltenham selling French fancy goods. This may have had a more secure future but the death of Mrs Edouart in childbirth with their third child in December 1825 sadly led to bankruptcy the following year. Edouart’s third and most successful venture was cutting profiles. He toured extensively taking thousands of profiles, his sitters including authors, musicians, politicians and royalty. In 1839 he set sail for New York where he was likewise in great demand for ten years before deciding to retire to his native France. He nearly didn’t make it though as his ship went down in a storm off the coast of Guernsey. Fortunately the passengers were safely rescued but Edouart lost much of his precious archive of work and the will to continue to work commercially thereafter.