Editing Pastel (section)

==Pastel art in art history==
The manufacture of pastels originated in the 15th century.<ref name="Monnier">Monnier, Geneviève, "Pastel", Oxford Art Online</ref> The pastel medium was mentioned by [[Leonardo da Vinci]], who learned of it from the French artist [[Jean Perréal]] after that artist's arrival in Milan in 1499.<ref name="Monnier" /> Pastel was sometimes used as a medium for preparatory studies by 16th-century artists, notably [[Federico Barocci]]. The first French artist to specialize in pastel portraits was [[Joseph Vivien]].

During the 18th century the medium became fashionable for [[portrait]] painting, sometimes in a mixed technique with gouache. Pastel was an important medium for artists such as [[Jean-Baptiste Perronneau]], [[Maurice Quentin de La Tour]] (who never painted in oils),<ref>Monnier, Geneviève, "Maurice-Quentin de La Tour", Oxford Art Online</ref> and [[Rosalba Carriera]]. The pastel [[still life]] paintings and portraits of [[Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin]] are much admired, as are the works of the Swiss-French artist [[Jean-Étienne Liotard]]. In 18th-century England the outstanding practitioner was [[John Russell (painter)|John Russell]]. In [[Colonial America]], [[John Singleton Copley]] used pastel occasionally for portraits.

In France, pastel briefly became unpopular during and after the [[French Revolution|Revolution]], as the medium was identified with the frivolity of the [[Ancien Régime]].<ref name="Werner_15" /> By the mid-19th century, French artists such as [[Eugène Delacroix]] and especially [[Jean-François Millet]] were again making significant use of pastel.<ref name="Werner_15">Werner, A., & Degas, E. (1977). ''Degas pastels''. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications. p. 15. {{ISBN|082301276X}}</ref> Their countryman [[Édouard Manet]] painted a number of portraits in pastel on canvas, an unconventional ground for the medium. [[Edgar Degas]] was an innovator in pastel technique, and used it with an almost [[expressionist]] vigor after about 1885, when it became his primary medium.<ref name="Werner_15" /> [[Odilon Redon]] produced a large body of works in pastel.

[[James Abbott McNeill Whistler]] produced a quantity of pastels around 1880, including a body of work relating to Venice, and this probably contributed to a growing enthusiasm for the medium in the United States.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/amdr2/hd_amdr2.htm |title=Nineteenth-Century American Drawings |work=Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History |publisher=[[The Metropolitan Museum of Art]] |access-date=27 August 2010}}</ref> In particular, he demonstrated how few strokes were required to evoke a place or an atmosphere. [[Mary Cassatt]], an American artist active in France, introduced the Impressionists and pastel to her friends in Philadelphia and Washington.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's ''Time Line of Art History: Nineteenth Century American Drawings'': {{Blockquote|[Among American artists] by far the most graphic and, at the same time, most painterly wielding of pastel was Cassatt's in Europe, where she had worked closely in the medium with her mentor Edgar Degas and vigorously captured familial moments such as the one revealed in ''Mother Playing with Child''.}}
[[File:William Merritt Chase, Study of Flesh Color and Gold, 1888, NGA 103252.jpg|alt=View of a woman from behind|thumb|William Merritt Chase, Study of Flesh Color and Gold, 1888, [[National Gallery of Art]], NGA 103252]]
On the East Coast of the United States, the Society of Painters in Pastel was founded in 1883 by [[William Merritt Chase]], Robert Blum, and others.<ref>{{Cite book|title=William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master|last=Smithgall|first=Elsa|display-authors=etal|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2016|isbn=9780300206265|location=New Haven|page=204}}</ref> [[The Pastellists]], led by [[Leon Dabo]], was organized in New York in late 1910 and included among its ranks [[Everett Shinn]] and [[Arthur Bowen Davies]].  On the American West Coast the influential artist and teacher [[Pedro Joseph de Lemos]], who served as Chief Administrator of the [[San Francisco Art Institute]] and Director of the [[Stanford University]] Museum and Art Gallery, popularized pastels in regional exhibitions.<ref name="edwardsrw">{{cite book|last1=Edwards|first1=Robert W.| title=Pedro de Lemos, Lasting Impressions: Works on Paper| date=2015|publisher=Davis Publications Inc.| location=Worcester, Mass.|isbn=9781615284054|pages=64–65, pls. 3b, 5a, 7a-11b}}</ref> Beginning in 1919 de Lemos published a series of articles on "painting" with pastels, which included such notable innovations as allowing the intensity of light on the subject to determine the distinct color of laid paper and the use of special optics for making "night sketches" in both urban and rural settings.<ref>School Arts Magazine (Worcester, Mass.): 18.7, 1919, pp. 353–356; 19.10, 1920, pp. 596–600; 25.2, 1925, p. 77.</ref> His night scenes, which were often called "dreamscapes" in the press, were influenced by French [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolism]], and especially [[Odilon Redon]].

Pastels have been favored by many modern and contemporary artists because of the medium's broad range of bright colors. Recent notable artists who have worked extensively in pastels include <!--NOTABLE artists with art in MUSEUM COLLECTIONS only, please--> [[Fernando Botero]], [[Francesco Clemente]], [[Daniel Greene (artist)|Daniel Greene]], [[Wolf Kahn]], [[Paula Rego]] and [[R. B. Kitaj]].