It is he who is generally recognised as having transformed the pastel from a sketching tool into a core artistic medium. In the late 1860s Edgar Degas (1834-1917) started to use it. The suppression of pastels was relatively short-lived. In the hands of a skilled exponent it is the most poetic and responsive of media. In some ways it is ironic that pastel has for so long been used by amateurs, because technically it is very difficult to master successfully. Few professional artists used it and it became very much the domain of the amateur. Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838), one of the great antiquarians of his day, considered pastel ‘quite unfashionable’. These artists could charge their clientele much the same prices as portrait painters working in oil.įashions came and went and, by around 1820, pastel fell from favour. Leading exponents of the medium included names such as Daniel Gardner (1750-1805), John Russell, RA (1745-1806) and Francis Cotes, RA (1726-70), who is regarded as the father of English pastels. At that time, members of affluent society deemed it the very height of fashion to have their images captured in ‘crayon painting’, as pastel was then called. However, it was from the mid-18th century in Britain that pastel truly came into its own. There are now more than 1600 different hues and shades available, all of which claim to have an almost limitless shelf-life.įirst manufactured in the 16th century, pastel quickly found approval with many of the iconic masters of the day, including the German-born Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543), who settled in London in 1532 and received the patronage of Henry VIII. Initially, pastel was only available in red, black and white − a far cry from today. Originating in Northern Italy in the 16th century, it was produced from pure powdered pigments mixed with enough gum Arabic, fish or animal glue to bind them. ![]() Renaissance masters, such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1510) and Michelangelo (1475-1564), used natural chalks for drawing, and it was from this that pastel developed. We are all familiar with the ‘chalky’ substance known as pastel − many children use it as their first introduction to art creation − but what exactly is it? However, they are all statements without any substance. ‘They are incredibly fragile’, ‘the colours fade’, ‘only amateurs use pastels’, ‘pastel limits a painter’s artistic expression’, ‘it is no more than a sketching tool’ − the list goes on. ![]() Misconceptionsįact: pastels have attracted more myths than any other art medium. The Artist Explorer was generously funded by Foyle Foundation.
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