In the fingers of a skilled pastellist, materials which had long been tricky to render in oils, like hair and fur, became strengths. Rosalba Carriera (1675–1757), Self-Portrait as ‘Winter’ (1730-31), pastel on paper, 46.5 x 34 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany. One of the most brilliant of this first wave of pastellists was Rosalba Carriera, whose work demonstrated that a good pastel painter could match the accomplishments of the best oil painters of the day. Mainstream artists started to use pastels in preparatory work and sketches, here Charles Antoine Coypel’s dramatic portrait of Medea (c 1715). Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752), Medea (c 1715), pastel, 29.4 x 20.6 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. He introduced new techniques, laying his pastels down on blue paper, and working in larger formats. Joseph Vivien was one of the first successful pastel portraitists of the eighteenth century, producing superb portraits such as this in about 1725. Joseph Vivien (1657–1734), Portrait of a Man (c 1725), pastel on blue paper, 91.4 x 66 cm, J. But at that price, only the rich would care. The snag at that time was that there were no fixatives to help to adhere pastel particles to the ground, all had to be glazed, and even then they didn’t prove as long-lasting as a well-made oil painting. Flesh looked amazingly lifelike, and in the absence of drying oils and varnish, had a soft, matte finish. The ‘look’ of pastel paintings also came into vogue. Because pastels don’t require any drying time, a good pastellist could produce a fine portrait in a very few sittings, making pastel portraits far less demanding on both parties, much quicker, and of course much cheaper. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that pastel portraits became popular, and quickly became all the rage. It is relatively small, but expertly worked. Nanteuil’s Portrait of Monseigneur Louis Doni d’Attichy, Bishop of Riez from 1663 is one of the first real pastel paintings, in creating a good likeness of his sitter. Robert Nanteuil (1623-1678), Portrait of Monseigneur Louis Doni d’Attichy, Bishop of Riez (1663), pastel on paper, 34.3 x 27.9 cm, J. Thea Burns has studied a large number of old works of art claimed to be made using pastels, and established that the earliest painter in pastels was probably Robert Nanteuil. Following application, they are often worked using rolled paper stumps and other tools, to blend them and produce a smooth and dense layer. They adhere best to grounds with rough surfaces, including roughened papers and abrasive coatings of fine pumice or marble dust. Of all the different media, pastels are the richest in pigment, and are often considered to be ‘pure colour’, although in fact they invariably contain a bulking powder too. A serious pastel painter is likely to have hundreds of different colours and shades stored in a chest of shallow drawers, perhaps. This shows one of my sets of pastels, now sadly unavailable, a Windsor & Newton boxed set of 200. Windsor & Newton Soft Pastels, boxed set of 200. You cannot paint properly in pastels with just half a dozen different colours, but need dozens or hundreds to support a broad spectrum of colour. Painting in pastels requires a substantial number of sticks of different colours although those of different colour can be blended on the paper or ground, pastels don’t mix like oil paints to produce good intermediate colours. The paste is then formed into sticks, which are dried slowly to produce a stick which is sufficiently firm as to be capable of being sharpened and applied to paper or other ground. They are made by mixing pigment, a bulking powder, and water containing a gum such as Gum Arabic or glue, into a thick dough-like paste, which gives pastels their name. Pastels are much more than just a stick of pigmented chalk or coloured earth. But there is no such thing as “pastel chalk”, any more than there is “oil watercolour”. For example, Leonardo da Vinci’s wonderful drawing of Isabella d’Este from 1500, is usually described as using “black and red chalk, yellow pastel chalk on paper”. Unfortunately there has been considerable confusion even among those who should know better. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Isabella d’Este (1500), black and red chalk, yellow pastel chalk on paper, 63 x 46 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. They were thus only used for ephemeral work such as studies and cartoons used in the production of more permanent works. Artists have long used chalks and similar solid media for drawing, but lacking any form of binding medium their only adherence to a ground is mechanical.
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