Hubard Gallery Pair

A striking pair of cut and well-gilded half-length silhouettes; original stained frames with old glass and gilt slips. The backing board of one frame has an incomplete trade label (no. 6) for the Hubard Gallery.

The Hubard Gallery was established in 1822 by a businessman seeking to exploit the precocious talents of the child artist, William James Hubard who whiled away the time in Chapel by cutting silhouettes of the congregation. The following year Hubard was presented with a silver palette by the Glasgow Philosophical Society who exhibited his work for the first time. This spurred the Gallery on to success and, to keep up with demand, several artists with individual styles and differing abilities were employed. They toured extensively around the British Isles and the United States. Hubard himself eventually left the Gallery to work on his own and when the American Civil War broke out he began experimenting with gunpowder but it was an interest that was to kill him when a bomb accidentally exploded at his foundry.