The Volunteer

This striking profile shows a Volunteer Officer in a braided coat, cravat and tall plumed hat with the letters -NTEERS visible around the top of the cap’s peak. The silhouette is reverse painted on convex glass and is backed with buff-coloured card. The face is rendered in true black whilst the body and hat are painted in transparent brown with a black outline. This is a documented stylistic trait associated with the work of Mrs Elizabeth Hudson (fl. 1783-1802) so, although the silhouette is unlabelled, it can be firmly attributed to her hand. Unusually too, the coat is heightened with black, gold and silver adding richness and depth to the profile.

The silhouette is housed in the original pressed brass frame with an old repair to the underside and provenance labels on the backing paper.

The daughter of Henry Chilcot, a jeweller working in the popular spa town of Bath, Elizabeth specialised initially in hairwork arrangements for portrait miniatures and in wax profiles only later turning to silhouette portraiture. Her career took her from her home town to a central London gallery but the sudden death of her patron then obliged her to return to touring. Alongside painting, Mrs Hudson had a theatrical career playing to packed houses up and down the country. Her final career move was to open a school for young ladies in Cheshire.