From the
Argus newsletter, 29 examples of silhouette photography.
Etymology of the name:
1798, from Fr. silhouette, in reference to Étienne de Silhouette
(1709-1767), French minister of finance in 1759. Usually said to be so
called because it was an inexpensive way of making a likeness of
someone, a derisive reference to Silhouette's petty economies to finance
the Seven Years' War, which were unpopular among the nobility. But
other theories are that it refers to his brief tenure in office, or the
story that he decorated his chateau with such portraits. The verb is
recorded from 1876.
The family name is a Frenchified form of a Basque surname; Arnaud de
Silhouette, the finance minister's father, was from Biarritz in the
French Basque country; the southern Basque form of the name would be Zuloeta or Zulueta, which contains the suffix -eta "abundance of" and zulo "hole" (possibly here meaning "cave").
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