Exhibit:

Recreating the Regency Silhouette and the Austen Canon

Preview of images

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The silhouette--a profile typically done in black and mounted on white--was a popular art form during the 18th and 19th centuries. Indeed, the Regency era when Jane Austen was publishing her novels is the recognized golden age of the silhouette.  The term "silhouette" derives from  a mid-18th-century French finance minister named Étienne de Silhouette, known to cut paper shadow portraits. The  silhouette, a personal memento, became fashionable among genteel patrons of 18th-century and 19th-century Europe and America. Portrait miniatures, which often took the form of silhouettes, were also popular Regency tokens of affection for Jane Austen’s family and her characters, who cherish, display, flaunt, and envy them. By the mid nineteenth century, the daguerreotype and photography eclipsed the silhouette, which came to be viewed as a folk art. Contemporary silhouette artist Kara Walker powerfully revived the art form to comment on pernicious representations of the Black body in visual culture and bring to the fore the ongoing legacy of slavery in the American consciousness.

Using materials from the Skidmore College IdeaLab and my own resources, we will each craft a Regency-style portrait miniature/silhouette, a material object which features prominently in Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. To transform this Regency token of affection into a memento of our study of Jane Austen, we will create a gallery of portrait miniatures/silhouettes. Each student will design a virtual “case” to showcase critical crafting and make connections to Austen’s oeuvre, illuminating her literary legacy and Regency times.

Images in this Exhibit

Jane Austen and the Art of the Silhouette

The paper silhouette presents a good deal of information about a person or character in an economical way. The art form grew in popularity because it offered a relatively inexpensive alternative to other forms of portraiture (e.g., the portrait miniature, painting, or sculpture). Étienne de Silhouette, who enjoyed making paper creations now called "silhouettes," was a cheapskate, so the art form came to have connotations of cheapness. Nonetheless, silhouettes were created well into the nineteenth century for members across the social classes. This case features a silhouette of the genteel...
The Self-Willed Lydia Bennet and the Historical Face behind Austen's Most Headstrong Bennet Sister

For my COVE case, I am attempting to recreate William Wood's portrait of Mary Pearson, who became known to the Austen family through her engagement to Jane's brother Henry Austen. The pair met in the summer of 1796 at Rowling and Kent (where Jane's elder brother Edward lived with wife Elizabeth). Jane, at this point in time, was in the beginning stages of writing her second novel, First Impressions, later to be renamed Pride and Prejudice (1813).  The engagement between Henry Austen and Mary Pearson was short-lived and was broken off by Henry just a few short...
Reimagining the Bennet Sisters: AI Portraits of Jane Austen's the Bennet Sisters

 I set out to see how accurate new AI technology could be in re-creating Regency style, or Regency era, portraiture. I thought the combination of new technology and work from the Regency era was an interesting contrast that I wanted to test. I’ve worked with AI before to create portraits, but none of them have been from a style or period, so this offered a challenge to make not only portraits using AI but also as accurate to the timeframe as I could be. I’ve used sites such as Artbreeder and Midjourney before, but Artbreeder focuses mostly on faces, and I wanted backgrounds and clothing...
Elizabeth Bennet's Unyielding Spirit: The Triumph of Strong Will in Pride and Prejudice

For my case, I decided to create a silhouette of Elizabeth Bennet. She was the character that I resonated with the most in reading all 6 of Austen's novels. Elizabeth Bennet of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) is considered the most brilliant and quick-witted of the Bennet daughters and the main character of the book. She is a very well-known female character in English literature. She has many admirable traits; she is attractive, intelligent, and outspoken in a good way. Despite being surrounded by nonsense and bad behavior, she can rise above it because of her honesty,...
Silhouette of Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice

For my COVE case, I decided to make a silhouette of Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. While reading the novel, Elizabeth Bennet as a character caught my eye, particularly the scene where she walks three miles in the rain and mud to see her sick sister. In the Regency era, it was very important for women to look presentable whenever they were in public, but this scene shows how little Elizabeth cared about her appearance when it came to family. This also portrays the strong theme of sisterhood shown throughout many Jane Austen novels. For my silhouette, I wanted to show...
Elizabeth Bennet's Fame and Legacy Shown Through a Portrait Miniature

Elizabeth Bennet, the quick-witted, charming, and beautiful protagonist of Austen's Pride and Prejudice, has captured the hearts of many readers from the release of the novel in 1813 to this day. She is arguably the most famous and adored of the Austen heroines and one of the most iconic female characters in English literature. Her silhouette, though not as famous as that of Austen herself, is based off of the novel's description of her and what historians and fans believe she may have looked like. Silhouettes and portrait miniatures were popular during this time period as a way...
The "Unaffected Manners" of Charles Bingley: Multi-Media Expressions of Masculinity in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Many critics champion Jane Austen as an early feminist writer. We can locate these claims within the complex constructions of the heroines whom her novels orbit — fearless, fickle, clever, and stubborn women with nuanced strengths and flaws. However, Austen’s interest in writing gender is not limited to her female characters. Instead, she explores the construct of masculinity using characterization, diction, and satire to showcase its expectations, privileges, and contradictions. Using Charles Bingley from Pride and Prejudice as a case study, I will illustrate the...
Silhouettes and the Mystery of Jane Austen

Silhouettes were an affordable and popular personal memento during the Regency era that one could keep for themselves or give to a loved one. They capture a likeness of the person pictured while still remaining somewhat mysterious. Of Jane Austen's family, we have detailed portraits of most of her brothers yet only sparce and vague depictions of her and her sister. Austen is the most historically significant member of her family though, because of her gender, she was not deemed important enough for an expensive portrait. One of the only images that exists of Austen is a silhouette (the...
Sisterhood in Austen's Novels: Better Together

Jane Austen has written some of the best love stories of all time with romantic pairings including Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice (1813) or Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley of Emma (1816), but neither pair supersedes the bond between sisters she crafted in Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice. Silhouettes capture the likeness of a person and were often given as a token of love. During the Regency era, a double silhouette, although less common, seems the best way to demonstrate a deep bond between sisters, the focus of...
An "Expressive Profile": A Silhouette Demonstration of Henry Crawford's Deviancy as a Testament to that of Jane Austen

This silhouette project is an exploration of the 19th-century aesthetic, bringing to life the character of Henry Crawford from Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park (1814).  The inspiration arose from Austen's early emphasis of Mr. Crawford's interesting appearance in Chapter 8. Austen notes, "For the first seven miles Miss Bertram had very little real comfort; her prospect always ended in Mr. Crawford and her sister sitting side by side full of conversation and merriment; and to see only his expressive profile as he turned with a smile to Julia." Through the art of...
The Unwinding of Fanny Price: A Silhouette from Mansfield Park

For my COVE case, I decided to craft a silhouette of Fanny Price from Mansfield Park (1814). After talking to my friends about their chosen silhouettes and COVE cases, it seemed to me that a lot of the silhouettes would be on more direct and less timid Austen characters of which Fanny Price is not. From this, I got the idea to highlight a more sensitive character. Fanny Price seems to be different from the other Austen heroines, which inspired me to challenge myself to shed light on a character who does not receive as much attention. I used a light blue shade on the frame in order...
Lockets and Keepsakes in Jane Austen

My project is a locket filled with Regency-style silhouettes of my mother, Donna Blanco, and my sister, Amanda Blanco. The final image of the locket was made digitally using Adobe illustrator and Photoshop. Originally the final product was supposed to be made in my grandmother's locket; however, after not being able to find it, my project became fully digital. When I find it, I will print out the silhouettes and insert them into the locket. My case discusses how the longstanding tradition of carrying images of a loved one lives on in the modern form of smart phone lock screens.  Some...