Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

In 1906, the Maehrisches Gewerbe-Museum, the predecessor of today’s Museum of Applied Arts in Brno, organized an exhibition of portrait silhouettes (and miniatures) from Moravian private collections, entitled Silhouette-Ausstellung. While portrait miniatures, which resemble traditional portrait painting, had already garnered attention from museums and galleries, silhouettes, as a distinct form of portraiture, had not received much attention in the Czech lands until the 1906 show. However, a cautious interest in silhouettes was common across Europe and the Brno exhibition was, in fact, one of the first to explore this art form. It opened just a few months after the exhibition at the Werckmeister Kunsthandlung in Berlin, with the two events occurring concurrently. A year later, Berlin’s Jahrhundertausstellung deutscher Kunst provided a comprehensive presentation of silhouettes. Following that, several more exhibitions emerged, including a show at Düsseldorf’s Kunstgewerbemuseum (1909), the Ausstellung moderner geschnittener Silhouetten in Berlin (1912), the Second Biennial Exhibition of Old and Modern Handicraft in Baltimore, and the exhibition of silhouettes in Danzig (both 1915). It should be mentioned that despite the title of the exhibition catalogue – Verzeichnis der Silhouetten-Ausstellung und Miniaturen aus Maehrischem Privatbesitz – the artworks on display were sourced not only from private collections but also from the Museum of Applied Arts in Graz, the Franisco Carolinum Museum in Linz, the Artaria publishing house in Vienna, Wiener Werkstätte, the prominent Viennese antique store Gilhofer & Ranschburg, and other organizations. In any case, the contribution of private lenders was significant, in keeping with the museum’s exhibition policy at the time, with similar projects including the Ausstellung Kunst- und Kunstgewerblicher Gegenstaende aus maehrischem Privatbesitz (1902).

The Brno exhibition lasted from April 22 to May 20, 1906, and since the private lenders included members of prominent Moravian aristocratic families, it became an important social event and a flagship of Brno’s Museum of Applied Arts. This was possible thanks to the support of the then director of the museum, Julius Leisching (1865-1933), who did research into portrait silhouettes, gave several lectures during the exhibition, and later co-authored the book Spitzenbilder, Papierschnitte, Porträtsilhouetten (Einhorn-Verlag, Dachau 1920). He was likely also the author of the exhibition concept. On April 25, the Moravian governor Karel Emanuel, Count of Žerotín (1850-1934) paid a ceremonial visit to the exhibition, and on May 19, Leisching welcomed Heinrich Frauberger (1845-1920), the founder and first director of the Museum of Applied Arts in Düsseldorf, and Alois Naske (1853-1941), the president of the Moravian Trade Association (Maehrischer Gewerbeverein). Numerous notes and announcements in the daily newspaper Brüner Zeitung invited readers to the exhibition and highlighted individual lenders from the upper classes (Prince Fürstenberg, Prince Schwarzenberg, Count Wilczek, Count Belcredi, Count Dubský, and others), contributing to the social prestige of the show.

The museum published its own paperback catalogue to accompany the exhibition. This catalogue has no introduction or reproductions but provides a complete list of all 826 works arranged according to their placement in the four exhibition halls. The first artefact in the exhibition was a print by Jean Ouvrier (1725–1784) after a design by Johann Eleazar Zeissig, called Schenau (1737-1806), entitled L'Origine de la Peinture, ou Les Portraits à la Mode (1760s-1770s). The print and its title refer to Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia. Pliny tells the story of the potter Butades and his daughter, who drew an outline of her beloved, which then served her father as the model for a clay relief. Although Pliny's primary focus is on the relief, this story is traditionally interpreted as the beginning of painting and, by extension, silhouette making, since the first method of silhouette making is to outline the shadow cast by a human head in profile. This myth was quite well known and became a source of inspiration for silhouette artists in the 18th and 19th centuries and a popular subject in art (e.g. John Mortimer, Alexander Runciman, David Allan, Jean Baptiste Regnault, Joseph-Benoît Suvée, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Karl Friedrich Schinkel). Thanks to Ouvrier’s print, the motif spread throughout Europe. In addition to the silhouettes, the exhibition also featured furniture in the style of Louis XVI, Rococo porcelain statuettes, and products of the Vienna porcelain factory, such as a breakfast set, and vases inspired by “griechischen Schwarzfiguren-Vasen.” The black-figure pottery painting was clearly seen as the direct formal starting point for black portrait silhouettes on a light background.

The silhouettes were displayed in an approximately chronological order; the first room presented portraits from the 1870s and 1880s. A separate room was devoted to works from the time of Johann Wolfgang Goethe ("Silhouetten aus Goethes Zeit"), a third room with Biedermeier furniture gave an overview of silhouettes mainly from the 1840s, followed by a room with silhouettes from the mid-19th century. The last part of the exhibition (cat. nos. 393-570) was devoted to contemporary silhouettes by Paul Konewka (1841-1871), Franz von Pocci (1807-1876), Otto Böhler (1847-1913), Koloman Moser (1868-1918), and others. The early silhouettes, which often straddled the line between art and craft, were not always signed; among the well-known artists represented in the exhibition were Johann Hieronymus Löschenkohl and Julius Schmid, both of whom worked in Vienna at the end of the 18th century. There were also curiosities: a collection of cut-out landscapes by an eight-year-old boy (cat. no. 242) and a pair of floral cut-outs allegedly made by Empress Maria Theresa (cat. nos. 122 and 128). Thanks to the verbatim transcriptions of the signatures in the exhibition catalogue, it is possible to identify some of the exhibits with objects in the collections of today’s museums. These include the silhouette of Johann von Voith (cat. no. 53, Sychrov Castle collections, inv. no. S 9922), the portrait of a lady and a gentleman playing the piano (cat. no. 60, Wiener Museum, inv. no. 56.345), and the glass medallion with counterpart silhouettes of a married couple (cat. no. Lobkowicz collections, Nelahozeves Castle, inv. no. LR5925). Among the portrayed were scientists, professors, members of aristocratic families (e.g. Auersperges, Fürstenbergs, Kinskys, Thuns), officials, military dignitaries, and students. The social position of the sitters corresponded to the growing popularity of portrait silhouettes across the social strata and the proportion of private lenders in the exhibition, among whom were collectors from Vienna (Max Strauss), Stuttgart (Gustav Pazaurek), Salzburg (Ludwig Videky), Munich and Dresden, Austro-Hungarian noble families, but also individuals, often members of the Brno bourgeoisie, who lent portraits of their ancestors to the exhibition (pharmacist František Josef Ramert, industrialist Arnold Skutezky, photographer Johann Baptist Gratzer and others). Julius Leisching, the director of the museum, lent a pendant with a signed silhouette and a tableau featuring ten portrait silhouettes.

The archive of the Moravian Museum of Applied Arts in Brno contains extensive correspondence between the museum and the lenders, which sheds light on the preparatory work, negotiations about the loans and their acceptance by the museum, requests for additions to the exhibition catalogue, and the return of the objects to their owners. It is noteworthy that most of the preparatory work took place at a brisk pace during the month of March (the opening took place on April 22). Thanks to the wide range of lenders and the large number of exhibits, the exhibition covered the diversity of silhouette production from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Visitors could admire cut-outs, embossed silhouettes, silhouettes painted on paper, ivory or glass, as well as silhouettes decorating jewelry, glasses, porcelain cups, a prayer book, or even a cookbook. In addition to individual portraits, which were the most common theme, there were also genre scenes and multi-figure portraits.

The exhibition also featured miniatures from Moravian private collections (cat. no. 571-754 and 781-826), portrait watercolours, drawings, and pastels (cat. no. 755-780). Unlike the silhouettes, the method by which these items were arranged is unclear. No dates are given in the catalogue, so it is impossible to determine the date of creation of these works. However, the authors accurately transcribed the signatures and specified the dimensions of the works, which may facilitate future identification.

The catalogue has no introductory text, but the museum journal Maehrisches Gewerbe-Museum Mitteilungen published an extensive three-part article entitled Die Silhouette which functioned as an introduction and featured reproductions of artworks. It was authored by Leisching. In his text, Leisching loosely traced the concept of the exhibition; however, without references to specific catalogue numbers, it is difficult to follow both the article and the exhibition catalogue simultaneously. Overall, it seems that Leisching intended the exhibition as a starting point for his exploration of the long history of silhouette making. He begins his text by referencing Ouvriere's print (the first item in the exhibition), discussing the aesthetic of classical antiquity in relation to silhouettes, and mentioning Louis XV's finance minister, Etienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), from whom the term "silhouette" was derived, originally in a pejorative sense. Leisching notes the similarity between silhouettes and cut-outs and finds the roots of both in the 17th century monastic milieu. He then discusses the science of physiognomy and the prominent late 18th-century physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), his relationship to Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), and Goethe's own interest in silhouettes. Goethe even made silhouettes himself, which led Leisching to the topic of amateur silhouette makers and silhouette making manuals published in Germany in the 1770s and 1780s. Leisching focuses on three of these manuals (published by Philipp Heinrich Perrenon in Leipzig, Frankfurt, Münster, and Hamm) and introduces the reader, through a series of quotations, to various silhouetting techniques, including the subsequent multiplication of silhouettes. In the second part of the article, Leisching presents the work of German and Austrian silhouette makers, paying special attention to an artist named Schmid who worked in Vienna at the end of the 18th century. At the same time, Leisching focuses on anonymous silhouettes, which, in his opinion, represent valuable evidence of everyday culture and faithfully depict the physical appearance of many personalities at the turn of the 19th century. In Leisching’s view, the most artistically valuable silhouetting technique was Goldglassilhouette, a combination of glass, gilding and black pigment. Leisching devotes the final, third part of his treatise to silhouette art of the first half of the 19th century, tracing the connection of the silhouette with book illustration, shadow theatre, and figurative and floral cut-outs. Through biographies of contemporary silhouette makers, he illustrates the vitality of this mode of representation in the second half of the 19th century, when it naturally transformed and evolved under the influence of Japonisme and other artistic tendencies towards modern graphic art.

In the local context, the Brno exhibition of silhouettes was a pioneering achievement and one of the first European exhibitions to explore this type of portraiture. At the end of the same year (from November 25 to December 2, 1906), it was followed by a similarly ambitious show organized by the Museum of Applied Arts in Hradec Králové and the Association of Austrian Industrial Museums, which featured some of the artworks previously on display in Brno. That same year, some of the works from Brno were loaned to the Leipzig Buchgewerberverein, the museums in Opava, Linz, České Budějovice, Plzeň, Hradec Králové, and Chrudim, from where they were transported back to Brno on December 22, 1906. This was a relatively common practice at the time, although it was very demanding in terms of organization - the loaned artifacts were exhibited in each place for two weeks, with one week reserved for transportation to the next destination. Thanks to this practice, many visitors were able to see the objects in a relatively short period of time (for example, the director of the Hradec Králové Museum informed Leisching that 1082 people visited the exhibition there).

Thanks to the clear chronological arrangement of the works, the Brno exhibition was able to present a large amount of material illustrating the popularity and diversity of portrait silhouettes. However, the attempt to contextualize this material by complementing it with contemporary furniture, prints, and bibelots seems at odds with the somewhat forced division of the exhibits into portrait silhouettes and miniatures. From today's perspective, we would expect the organizers to exhibit these portrait media together, since they share many common characteristics, such as small size and similar artistic practices. Soon after, scholars began to note these similarities and to treat silhouettes and miniatures together: Miniaturen und Silhouetten (Max von Boehn, 1917), Rukověť sběratelova (Jan Maria Augusta, 1927), Miniatura a drobná podobizna v době empírové a příbuzenské v Čechách (František Xaver Jiřík, 1930). For a long time, Leisching’s article remained the main source of information on silhouettes, demonstrating his familiarity with contemporary German publications on the subject as well as with historical technological manuals. However, Leisching did not provide an in-depth analysis of the silhouette art in Moravia or Brno, as this was likely not his goal. Rather, he aimed to present the silhouette as a specific phenomenon in its diversity and complexity. The first exhibition to provide an overview of local silhouette art was the 1913 show in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. However, unlike the Brno exhibition, it focused primarily on miniatures, with silhouettes playing a secondary role.

Since both the Brno museum and the exhibition were naturally oriented toward the Austrian and German milieus, Czech-language periodicals ostentatiously ignored the show. Vienna, on the other hand, welcomed it: the exhibition was successfully reprised there in 1908 in the Hug Helter art salon and its opening ceremony was attended, among others, by Max von Wickenburg (1857-1918), section head of the Ministry of Culture and Education. A report in the Maehrisches Gewerbe-Museum Mitteilungen shows that, as in Brno, the emphasis was on ink églomisé silhouettes from Goethe's time and originals by contemporary German and Austrian artists. According to the anonymous author of the report, the exhibition attracted considerable attention from collectors and artists alike, and the trio of lectures by Julius Leisching on March 14, 21 and 24, 1908 entitled Technik und Kunst des Eisens, des Goldes und des Tones (Technique and Art of Iron, Gold and Clay) was so successful that it had to be repeated for students from Brno secondary schools.

Anežka Mikulcová

Works Cited

Johann Kaspar Lavater, Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe, Leipzig – Winterthur 1775–1778

Philipp Heinrich Perrenon (ed.), Ausführliche Abhandlung über die Silhouetten und deren Zeichnung, Verjüngung, Verzierung und Vervielfältigung, Frankfurt – Leipzig 1780

Philipp Heinrich Perrenon (ed.), Beschreibung der Bou-Magie oder der Kunst, Schattenrisse auf eine gichte und sichere Art zu vervielfältigen, Münster – Hamm 1780

Philipp Heinrich Perrenon (ed.), Beschreibung eines sehr einfachen zur Verjüngung der Schattenrisse dienenden Storchschnabels, den sich jeder Liebhaber selbst verfertigen kann, nebst einem geometrischen Beweis und Tafeln über dies Werkzeug, Münster – Hamm 1780

Max von Boehn, Miniaturen und Silhouetten. Ein Kapitel aus Kulturgeschichte und Kunst, München 1917

Max Bucherer – Adolf Spamer – Julius Leisching, Spitzenbilder, Papierschnitte, Porträtsilhouetten, Dachau 1920

Robert Rosenblum, The Origin of Painting. A Problem in the Iconography of Romantic Classicism, The Art Bulletin XXXIX, no. 4, 1957, pp. 279–290

Harry Blättel, International dictionary miniature painters, porcelain painters, silhouettists, München 1992

Ilsebill Barta Fliedl, Lavater, Goethe und der Versuch einer Physiognomik als Wissenschaft, in: Sabien Schulze (ed.), Goethe und die Kunst, Stuttgart 1994, pp. 192–218

Archival Sources

Archive of the Moravian Gallery in Brno, fonds Moravské uměleckoprůmyslové museum [Moravian Museum of Applied Arts], carton no. 138, inv. no. 202 (830 folios in total)

Anonymous author, Museumsnachrichten, Maehrisches Gewerbe-Museum Mitteilungen. Zeitschrift des Verbandes Oestrr. Kunstgewerbemuseen XXIV, 1906, no. 1 and 6, p. 14 and 95

Anonymous author, Silhouetten-Ausstellung, Brünner Zeitung, 1906, no. 60, 14. 3., p. 2; no. 92,  21. 4., p. 2; no. 93, 24. 4., p. 2; no. 96, 27. 4., p. 2; no. 100, 1. 5., p. 2; no. 105, 8. 5., p. 2; no. 108, 10. 5., p. 2; no. 110, 12. 5., p. 2; 1906, no. 117, 21. 5., p. 2; no. 120, 25. 5., p. 2; no. 121, 26. 5., p. 2; no. 123, 29. 5., p. 6; no. 126, 1. 6., p. 2; no. 127, 2. 6., p. 2; no. 127, 3. 6., p. 2

Anonymous author, Vom Erzherzog Rainer-Museum, Mitteilungen des Erzherzog Rainer-Museums in Brünn XXVI, 1908, no. 5, p. 71

G. H., Eine Silhouetten-Ausstellung, Österreichisch-Ungarische Buchdrucker-Zeitung XXXIV, 10. 5. 1906, no. 19, pp. 248–249

Julius Leisching, Der Brünner Miniaturmaler Patrizius Kittner, Mitteilungen des Erzherzog Rainer-Museums in Brünn XXIV, 1906, no. 8, pp. 113–124

Walter Rothbarth, Das menschliche Ausschnittbild [Silhouette] eine Brieger Erfindung?, Mitteilungen des Erzherzog Rainer-Museums in Brünn XXXIV, 1916, no. 2, pp. 27–28, cit. on p. 27

Výroční zpráva vyšší dívčí školy Vesny v Brně za školní rok 1906 (zmínka o návštěvě výstavy) [Annual report of the Vesna girls' secondary school in Brno for the school year 1906 (mention of the visit to the exhibition)], no. 4, 1906, p. 20