What is Pastel? Buttery soft, velvety smooth and brilliantly hued pastels bring true pleasure to many artists and art lovers. Florals, figures and fauna manifest themselves in bursts of light captivating radiant color upon toothy surfaces as if through sheer magic. Spontaneous looking portraits, flowers, landscapes, architecture and boudoir scenes are impressionistically apprehended with quick strokes, broad blends and rich layered pigments. A red stroke next to a white stroke becomes a pink blended rose petal at the touch of a finger, stiff bristle dry brush or soft tissue paper. Most contemporary amateur and professional pastel artists trace their roots to 19th century French impressionists, especially Edgar Degas. Degas took his pastel work very seriously, developing his own fixative allowing him to paint over previously painted surfaces. His figures were often lit from below and painted while singing or dancing. He frequently employed underpainting in watercolor to intensify the light catching effects of dry pastels. Degas followed a long line of European artists who were enamored with pastels. Leonardo da Vinci used black and red chalk with yellow pastel highlights to complete a portrait drawing of "Isabelle d'Este, Duchess of Mantua" in 1499. According to historian Geneviève Monnier, da Vinci learned what he referred to as "the dry coloring method" from French artist Jean Perréal. In France, pastel painting grew to enjoy great popularity through the proliferation of the so-called three-crayon portrait drawn in black, red and white chalk on toned paper. By the 17th century highly refined finished portraits were being executed by a number of artists using a broad range of colors which rivaled the palettes of many oil painters. During the 1720s, the innovative Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera turned to pastel as the sole medium for her society portraits of Italian and French women. Degas was among many working in pastel during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Other pastel painters include Edouard Manet, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt and Odilon Redon. These artists, who were trying to excite the human eye and arrest the fleeting visual and emotional effects of a world in constant motion, found pastel to be the perfect medium. It is ironic that the same medium used for its ability to capture the immediacy of a momentary gesture or luminous mood has truly ancient origins. The use of dry pigments in various physical states began with the earliest hominids. Neanderthal burial sites reaching back 40,000 years reveal funerary rituals which included the sprinkling of fresh flower petals and dry red ochre on the corpse. Cave paintings in Lascaux, France, dating back more than 15,000 years, utilized charcoal and both wet and dry pigments to render huge animals on the vaulted ceilings. Presumably drawn and painted by torch-light, these early pictorials employ methods and materials similar to those used by pastel painters. The human hand imprint is found in caves and on cliff faces around the world. Dry materials, such as powdered charcoal or mineral pigments were dusted over the back of the hand placed over the target surface prepared with a coating of saliva, animal fat or tree resin. In Britain, trenches dug into white chalk based hillsides were used by early Iron Age people to form gigantic outline drawings depicting a highly stylized horse in Berkshire, England, a human figure in Wilmington, England and a nude male warrior wielding a club spanning 180 feet on a hillside in Dorset. Some historians credit prehistoric people with the manufacture of early pastel sticks packed by hand into hollow animal bones. The bones were left near the fire until the pigment laden paste dried and shrank for easy removal. Dry stick, Conté crayon, oil pastel and pencil pastels now form an aesthetic and technical bridge between drawing and painting. Originally employed by artists to work out compositional and color problems in preparation to painting with oil, the use of pastels evolved into a unique painting medium. Made from precipitated chalk, dry pigments and a binder (traditionally Gum tragacanth derived from Asian legume plants), modern pastels have been in constant use since the Renaissance. Precipitated chalk, the essential constituent of pastels, is produced from geologically ancient soft sedentary limestone containing the shells of billions of dead marine protozoan. The limestone is finely ground in water and allowed to settle. The water is poured off and the resulting powdered paste is left to dry. Tonal ranges are created from various amounts of pigment blended with chalk paste. From cave paintings and earthworks to Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning, pastel styles and subjects cover the entire aesthetic spectrum. The above was taken from Collectors' Guide Online - click here. Misconceptions Pastel suffers from a poor reputation largely because of a lack of knowledge about the medium. At times even the so called experts perpetuate this ignorance: I recently saw a general art book published in 1989 and written by an artist with a Masters Degree, which not only classified pastels merely as a drawing medium, but also described it as chalk. This characterization, is patently inaccurate. First, it is true that pastel is a drawing medium. Traditionally it has been used for making sketches preliminary to a larger work. Few people realize that it is also can be used as a painting medium. Finished works of art can be rendered in pastels which are comparable to those done in other media. Second, pastel is not chalk. There is an obvious similarity in appearance with the colored blackboard chalks that some of us may have used in grammar school. Colored chalk is a limestone substance impregnated with fugitive dyes. Though some pastels contain a small amount of chalk to make them abrade more easily, pastel must never be confused with colored chalk. What are pastels then? Another misconception is connected with the name - "pastel." In the past, so many pastels were done with a weak, delicate appearance that pastel has become synonymous with light, delicate tints. This was a matter of choice of colors by the artists rather than a necessity. Pastel does not, at all, refer to pale colors, as the word is commonly used in the fashion and cosmetic industry. They are made with exactly the same pigment used in making all fine art paints. Powdered pigment, mixed with a little water and a special binder is ground into a paste, rolled into sticks and allowed to dry. The name pastel comes from a French word pastiche, meaning paste. It is a painting medium with a full range of artistic possibilities. In the hands of a skillful painter with a knowledge of pastel's working properties, a complete range of colors, values, textures and techniques is possible. Longevity It is also a myth that pastels are impermanent because of the lack of light fastness. In the 1870's - synthetic dyes of brilliant hues were in wide use by prominent artists. Most of these dyes fade quickly when exposed to ultraviolet light. These fugitive dyes were still popular even as late as the 1940's. They were not only used in the making of pastels but also in the papers that were used as the painting surface. These dyes are no longer used in making pastels, but the reputation of impermanence still lingers. Modern pastel is the most permanent of all media. When applied to a conservation ground and properly framed there is no danger of yellowing or cracking as in oils, they never require restoration, and they can last much longer. The cave paintings of prehistoric man in France and Spain which were painted using earth colors mixed with water, are considered the precursors of pastel painting. Some of these are more than 15,000 years old. A work done in pastel is fragile and can be smeared or damaged by rough handling, therefore it must be framed under glass, however, the painted surface is surprisingly sturdy. History Pastels can be traced back to the 16th century. Its invention is attributed to the German painter, Johann Thiele. A Venetian woman artist, Rosalba Carriera was the first known artist to make consistent use of pastel. Chardin did portraits with an open stroke, while LaTour preferred the blended finish. Thereafter, a galaxy of famous artists....Watteau , Copley, Delacroix, Millet, Manet, Renoir, Courbet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler, Cassatt, Bonnard, Hassam, William Merritt Chase, Vuillare, .... just to list the more familiar names, used pastel in finished works rather than only preliminary sketches. The French Impressionist, Edgar Degas was the most prolific user of pastel, and its champion. In 1988, Sotheby's sold at auction a Degas pastel, for $7,500,000!