Born at St. Germain in 1756, he was taught copper engraving at Rouen, and was specially clever in reducing copper-plate engravings. In the _Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes_, Joubert relates having seen a plan of St. Petersburg engraved in minute size by Gonard, who had reduced it from one of much larger size. This brings us to the pantograph. In _Le Journal de Paris_, 1788, Le Sieur Gonard, who is called a _dissenateur physionomiste_, announces that he is in a position to take silhouette portraits quicker than any other artist. He will make these for 24 sols each, but he will not make less than two for each person. The price of those of minute size, suitable for mounting, as boxes, lockets, and rings, is £3. He also announces silhouettes à l’Anglaise; these have the dress and head-dress added, and the price is £6 each, whether they be on ivory for wearing as an ornament or on paper to be framed. Whether the paper is scissor-work—the profile cut out of black paper—or the black drawing is made on paper, we are not told. For this latter type a sitting of one minute only was necessary, and the following day the portrait was finished. Another process, which he describes as _silhouette colorée_, can also be done. These seem to have been more like miniatures; they cost £12, and a three-minute sitting was required. The portrait was finished on the next day but one. Gonard’s address is given as the Palais Royal, under arch No. 166, on the side of the Rue des bons Enfants, and he describes how a lantern shall be lit each evening to facilitate the finding of his salon on dark nights. The lantern had silhouettes on it, as a sign for the footmen bringing carriages. One cannot help imagining the scene when gay aristocrats, with powdered heads and dainty brocades, drove up to have their pictures taken in the fashionable mode, and beaux, with lace cravats and wigs, trod the floors of the studio with steps as firm as they might be three years hence when mounting the steps of the guillotine. How many of those beauties of the court of Louis XVI. were left when the terrors of the Revolution were past? How many of the pathetic little paper shadows have come down to us, fragile, indeed, but outliving the doomed originals by a century and a half? As would be imagined, Gonard used elaborately engraved mounts to add to the grace of his portraits, and occasionally he used relief in white, grey, or colour in the execution of the portrait.