pastel

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pastel. A drawing or painting material consisting essentially of a stick of colour made from powdered pigments mixed with just enough resin or gum to bind them (in addition there is usually a mineral filler to give support to the stick); the term is also applied to a work produced with this medium. Pastel is applied directly to paper, with no diluent, and a significant difference between this and other methods of painting is that the colour as applied represents the final result—no allowance has to be made for changes during drying. It can produce very rich and subtle effects, but it has the disadvantage of being extremely fragile and easily dislodged from the paper. This can be counteracted by using a fixative, but fixing is apt to reduce the brilliance of the colour. As they are so delicate, pastels are generally used on a small scale, and they have always been especially popular for portraits.

Pastels originated at the end of the 15th century as a development from the use of chalk for drawing: Leonardo's famous profile drawing of Isabella d'Este (1500, Louvre, Paris) is in black and red chalk with touches of pastel (see also Perréal). At first colours were generally limited to black, white, and red or flesh-colour, but a full range of colours had been developed by the early 18th century. The first notable artist to devote herself almost exclusively to the medium was the Venetian Rosalba Carriera, who was internationally successful and helped inspire the great vogue for pastel portraiture in 18th-century France (Chardin, Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, and Perronneau being famous exponents). During the first half of the 19th century the medium declined in popularity, but there was a great revival of interest in the second half of the century, especially among the French Impressionists, who found it well suited to their characteristic freshness of observation and speed of work. Cassatt, Manet, Redon, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Whistler were all notable exponents, but the supreme master of pastel at this time was undoubtedly Degas, who used the medium with a power, freedom, and inventiveness that none of his contemporaries matched. He described himself as a ‘colourist with line’, underlining the fact that pastel lies on the borderline between drawing and painting.

pastel A drawing or painting material consisting of a stick of colour made from powdered pigments mixed with just enough resin or gum to bind them. Pastel is applied directly to paper, with no diluent, and a significant difference between this and other methods of painting is that the colour as applied represents the final result—no allowance has to be made for changes during drying. Pastel has the disadvantage, however, of being very fragile and easily dislodged from the paper. This can be counteracted by using a fixative, but fixing is apt to reduce the brilliance of the colour. As they are so delicate, pastels are usually used on a small scale, and they have been especially popular for portraits. They were first used in the late 15th century and their heyday was the 18th century. The medium had a second great flowering in the late 19th century, when several of the Impressionists, most notably Degas, took it up. See also Chalk.

pastel , artists' medium of chalk and pigment, tempered with weak gum water and usually molded in the form of sticks; also a work done in this medium. Pastel was in use in Italy in the 15th cent. and is doubtless much older. It was introduced into 18th-century France by the Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera. The medium was then used by such masters as Maurice Quentin de La Tour and Vigée-Lebrun, and in the 19th cent. by Degas, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler, and Cassatt. In the 20th cent. Matisse was a master of pastel. Pastels are often classified as paintings, although the medium lends itself to the more direct and spontaneous approach of drawing.

pas·tel / paˈstel/ • n. 1. a crayon made of powdered pigments bound with gum or resin. ∎  a work of art created using such crayons: a pastel entitled “Girl Braiding Her Hair.” 2. a soft and delicate shade of a color: the subtlest of pastels and creams. • adj. of a soft and delicate shade or color: pastel blue curtains. DERIVATIVES: pas·tel·ist / -ist/ (also pas·tel·list) n.

pastel dry paste used for crayon XVII; drawing in this XIX. — F. pastel, or its source It. pastello, dim. of pasta PASTE.

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