Of all those who cut the likeness direct after glancing at the sitter, the Frenchman, August Edouart, was undoubtedly the most skilful and prolific. He styles himself “Silhouettist to the French Royal Family. Patronised by His Royal Highness the late Duke of Gloucester and the principal nobility of England, Scotland, and Ireland.” When he first came to England as a refugee, he seems to have supported himself by a strange industry, invented by himself, which he calls mosaic hair-work. In the descriptive catalogue which is before us, of an exhibition of this work held about 1826, such items appear as a wolf’s head; a squirrel, made with real hair, climbing a tree; a marine view with a man-of-war. “This performance in human hair imitates the finest true engraving; the curious may perceive, with the help of a magnifying glass, the cordage and men on board. This work has taken at least twelve months in its execution.” When he made hair portraits of men, women, or animals, he used their own natural hair, “raising them from the ivory and making bas-reliefs.” “These works,” writes Edouart, “being of my own invention and execution, I have desisted from making for the last twelve years, since the death of my royal and distinguished patrons, Queen Charlotte, the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, and others.” It is strange that Edouart never combined hair-work with shadow portraiture, as did some of the German exponents. Being so expert a hair artist, it would have been natural to expect some examples of this rare combination; none, however, have as yet come before the author, though, knowing Edouart was an expert in both crafts, such examples have been sought. Edouart wrote a treatise on “Silhouette Likenesses,” a book which is now very rare. It was published by Longman & Co., Paternoster Row, in 1835, and is illustrated with eighteen full-page plates, and it is characteristic of the man that the first is a portrait of himself; others are of celebrated personages of the day, and there are also several genre pictures executed with considerable skill. It is in portraiture, however, that his unrivalled skill has placed him high above all other workers in black paper cutting.