Silhouette

Silhouette or shadow outline are terms from painting, Optics, Photography. It refers to the outline or contour of a surface or the area enclosed by this contour surface that is dark with a light background (or vice versa) takes off. This can also be a natural contour (for example, the shadow of a body or generated by the building contour of a city (Skyline ) ) or artificial (eg, a shadow drawing or a silhouette ).

Origin of the term

The term silhouette goes back to the former French finance minister Etienne de Silhouette († 1767), the much avarice was said that he would decorate his house with black silhouettes instead of oil paintings. Thus, the term initially had a negative connotation in the sense of cheap art ',' badly-done portrait '. Over time, the term rendered but also on issues such as value-neutral, natural contours ' and on, light-dark contours ' as an artistic medium.

History of the silhouette in the 18th century

In the second half of the 18th century, Germany was hit by a wave of enthusiasm for silhouettes that arose less often than paper cut, but were mostly carefully inked. Especially intellectual circles were covered by this enthusiasm. So designed and built the Giessen legal scholars and later Judge at the Court of Appeal Darmstadt Ludwig Julius Friedrich Hoepfner for his purpose a special Silhouettierstuhl could be fixed on the upper body and head to the person portraying. The Swiss philosopher Johann Caspar Lavater supplied in 1772 by his writing of the physiognomy and below the fundamental work physiognomic fragments to convey the knowledge of human nature and the human love even then ridiculed by his contemporaries theoretical foundation for collections of silhouettes of several important personalities of his time the plant. His physiognomy as a guide saw itself as the theory for the classification of various human characters based on the facial features and body shapes. This Lavater resorted to an extensive collection of silhouettes. Lavater was supported by the Swiss physician Johann Georg Zimmermann, who was " Councilor and personal physician Royal Great Britain shear " in Hannover since 1768. While Goethe about Lavater initially expressed admiration and later moved away from its previously admired friend, the Göttingen physicist and philosopher Georg Christoph Lichtenberg held only biting sarcasm for Lavater ready. The fact is today that the physiognomy and their supporters such as Johann Heinrich Merck have helped to have extensive and important collections of shadowy forms from this period because significant Silhouetteure as Johann Wilhelm Wendt by they became sought-after artists of her time. The silhouette and the silhouette collections have become so permanently connected to this receptive literary circles as the circle of the sentimental to the Great Countess or the Göttingen Hainbund and its members. The Goethe- collector Anton Kippenberg devoted to the silhouette of the 18th century a significant contribution in the yearbook collection Kippenberg.

Silhouette Christian Adolph Overbeck from the Johann Heinrich Voss collection

Stud. J. von Wedemeyer, senior member of the Hanoverian country team, in the Schubert silhouettes collection

Stud. Johann Jakob von Patkul, member of the Student Order ZN in the Schubert silhouettes collection

The publication of this collection began before the First World War and then sat still in the Weimar period continued. Important collections are the silhouettes collection of Schubert derived from Ratzeburg stud. jur. Carl Schubert, located since 1887 in the collection inventory of the Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen and over 200 silhouettes shows not only the sizes of the time but also the Göttingen university teachers, beadles, fencing instructor and students in his study. Schubert studied from 1778 in Göttingen and his younger brother helped him even after graduation until about 1781 knowledge of the persons he had combined in his memory album. As he noted on the backs of the silhouettes for themselves memorabilia, the members of his stock Hanoverian country team and other Göttingerland teams could be read during his years of study on the basis of this collection.

History of the silhouette in the 19th century

While the use of silhouettes in the French period, not least subsided due to the competition of the strong became fashionable more romantic pedigree leaves, she experienced after the wars of liberation, a true Renaissance Connection students who, from 1815 to the late 1850s, despite the supervening as competition lithography often be could represent silhouette. The resulting collections of images were collected in student places as Kneip images. Given the meantime zopflosen, less ornate hairstyle now with student's cap and stripes, which were often created in color.

Carl Otto Dammers ( 1830) as a member of the Corps Hannovera Göttingen

Otto von Bismarck as a member of the Corps Hannovera 1832/33

Hermann Graf von Goertz - Wrisberg in stripes of his corps Brunsviga Göttingen in 1840

The Guelph trailer Ludwig Heinrich Grote as Göttingen Frise in 1843

The zoologist Heinrich Alexander Pagenstecherstraße donated the Corps Hanseatia in Göttingen ( 1844 )

Wilhelm Liebknecht Couleur of Corps Hasso Nassovia Marburg, 1847

Gustav Nachtigal Altmärker as in Hall (1854 )

By 1860, silhouettes and lithographs were displaced simultaneously by the now emerging, cheaper and modern photography. Nevertheless, the topic is still practiced in the field of cabaret today.

Effect and processing

A matching game that uses silhouettes, is the Originally from China Tangram. In silhouette, the silhouette of a face or a scene from mostly black construction paper is imaged by cutting out the background. In many cases, a similar effect is often achieved today photographically.

Silhouette of a monastery

Silhouette of a roofer

Foliage

Silhouette of two fishermen