Silhouettes of William White and Felix Grundy.
New York: E. B & E. C. Kellogg, 1844. Item #840 Together two folio, full-length lithographic silhouette images of a pair of prominent Americans, the first set against an architectural background, and the second posed in an interior parlor room space. The lithographs measure 335 x 245 mm., [13 x 9 ½ inches], and the silhouettes themselves measuring about 245 x 70 mm., [9 ½ x 2 ¾ inches]. Well-designed silhouettes illustrating the profiles of William White, the noted Philadelphia minister and sometime president of the Philadelphia Bible Society, and Felix Grundy, the longtime senator from Tennessee and supporter of Jacksonian democracy. William Henry Brown career as a profilist began as early as the 1820’s and continued until just before the Civil War. He is often compared to Edouart because of his use of the lithographic background but it is apparent from his early work, which is began at least 15 years before Edouart arrived in the United States, that his hand cut profiles distinguished his work from all other specialists in full-length cuts. Brown is also famous for his delicate cuts of processions and large groups of people in congregation. His cuts often illustrate intricate designs of America in motion. As the critic Charles Henry Hart wrote in an article entitled “The Last of the Silhouettists” for Outlook, he describes Brown as being “amazingly clever at cutting ships under sail, cleaving the billows or becalmed, tossed on the stormy wave crests, or riding securely at anchor. In these designs the delineation of the varied motions was executed with uncommon skill.”
Rifken, Blume J. Silhouettes in America, 1790-1840: A Collector’s Guide. Burlington, Vermont: Paradigm Press, 1987, p. xii. Alice Van Leer Carrick, Shades of our Ancestors, Boston,
Price: $750.00