Fun and folky cut & paste silhouette of a girl with a definite pout on her face…..she didn’t want to sit for her profile cutting! This mid-19th century silhouette has naïve but super fun and folky graphite detail drawn into the cut profile. She wears her hair parted down the middle (shown clearing by the pencil drawing), pulled over the ears and knotted at the nape of her neck with a few curls hanging out on her neck. She wears a double strand of beads as a necklace. She seems to have a chemise used as a filler for her dress and her sleeves are tight and ruffled at the top of the arm and then full, probably a Bishop style of sleeve. She shows the anger of a child called in from play to do something as boring as sit for a quick portrait. You can see that her head in incline forward just a bit and you can tell that she has her teeth clinched. I love that the silhouettist captured all! The cutting is nicely done by someone who was almost certainly an amateur. The silhouette is cut from white paper and was later laid onto a plain black paper background that suits it perfectly.

The profile is housed in a period moulded wood frame on which the outermost front edge is paint decorated with red over black and the rest of the frame painted black. The frame appears to be of original size and the paint is old, but seems to have been painted later than the frame was made….there are some frame dings that have black paint over them showing that the paint job was done after the dinging. Still, it’s nice old paint. It frame has a nice oxidized wood backing and a brass hanging loop. Framed size is 5 ¾” x 6 ¾”. Circa 1850.

#5757    Sold