Made of almost pure pigment, soft pastel painting didn’t start until after 1650. They excel in representing flesh, so became popular for portraits, and have since extended to other genres.
Carriera
Don Quixote, Netherlandish Proverbs, grain fields in Ukraine, a flock of sheep in a boat, the Golden Horn, pastels and kabkabs.
From Robert Nanteuil’s first pastel portraits in the 1660s to Ants Laikmaa in 1929, a history of the greatest pastel painters and links to articles about individual artists.
Pastellist like Rosalba Carriera led the way in making marks to create the illusion of finely detailed fabrics. This contrasts with smooth and detailed faces.
A superb painter in pastels, she painted Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France, more than thirty times. She survived the revolution and terror to paint Napoleon’s youngest sister as a queen.
One of the most brilliant of the first wave of painters in pastels, a founding mother of the Rococo, and one of the greatest of all women painters.
Judith Leyster, Elisabette Sirani, Maria Sibylla Merian, Rosalba Carriera, Angelica Kauffmann, Mary Moser, Anne Vallayer-Coster and Louise Élisabeth VigĂ©e Le Brun – pioneers every one.
A British trader and merchant banker, and an Italian scientist who wrote an account of Newtonian physics for women – their influence on Canaletto, Tiepolo, and others.
Developed in the mid 1600s, pastels are often considered to be the ‘purest’ form of painting, in which pure pigment is applied to the ground.
The early history of pastel, from Robert Nanteuil, through the brilliant portraits of Rosalba Carriera, to Maurice Quentin de La Tour, and the hyperrealism of Liotard.
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