OF SILHOUETTE AND TAXES

'Silhouette' (pronounced sɪlʊˈɛt) was the answer to a word puzzle posed in a WhatsApp group that I am a member of. As you know, it is the image of a person (animal, object or scene) represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject.

The word looked to be of French origin and I was intrigued. The findings of my 'research' were fascinating. First of all, it is an eponymous word, that is, derived from the name of a person (as in Boswellian biography or Dickensian character) or thing (as in Himalayan blunder). It comes from the name of Etienne de Silhouette who the minister for finance in the 18th century France.

De Silhouette, born in 1709 was a scholar in finance and economics. He had spent a year in London learning about the economy of Britain. When appointed France's Controller-General of Finance in 1759, he had the unviable task cut out for him: of balancing a precarious economy. He had to curb France's spiralling deficit and strengthen the finances for the Seven Years' War against Britain.

In the Ancien Régime, the nobility and the church were exempt from taxes. In his attempt to restore the kingdom's finances, he took a leaf out of the English method of taxing the rich and privileged. He devised the "general subvention," i.e., taxes on external signs of wealth (doors and windows, farms, luxury goods, servants, profits). He also managed to curtail Royal household expenditure. De Silhouette introduced new taxes and reduced state pensions. He took the war measure of ordering the melting down of goldware and silverware.

These steps made him hugely unpopular. He was criticized by the nobility including Voltaire, who thought his measures, though theoretically beneficial, were not suitable for wartime and the French political situation.

Suffice it to say that nobody - the royalty, the clergy, the nobility or the commoner - was happy with the the steps he took for setting the economy right. It was therefore hardly surprising that his term was very short: a mere eight months.

But what does all this have to do with the style of pictures named after him? Good question. The draconian steps that De Silhouette took caused him to become the subject of hostility. His penny-pinching manner led to the expression à la Silhouette (like Silhouette) to be applied to things perceived as cheap or austere.

An art form that gained popularity during this period was a shadow profile cut from black paper. It provided a simple and inexpensive alternative for those who could not afford more decorative and expensive forms of portraiture, such as painting or sculpture. Those who considered it cheap attached the word "silhouette" to it.

That is how this art-form, still popular, came to acquire the name silhouette.