‘Powder and Light’: The Getty Introduces Pastel Collection

By MAGNOLIA LAFLEUR | Reporter

The latest collection to hit the J. Paul Getty Museum is that of impressionist and symbolic fine artists Edgar Degas, Odilon Redon, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others, called Powder and Light: Late 19th-Century Pastels.

The exhibition tracks the evolution of pastels from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century.

Drawing attention to the scores of pastel styles utilized by artists throughout a time period of “radical experimentation,” many of the impressionists during the 1870s to 1880s, used pastels as a way to capture the ever evolving world through tones of light that evoked the essence of “dreams and imagination.”

“The medium of pastel, once considered stuffy and old-fashioned, experienced a surge in popularity during the last quarter of the 19th century,” Emily Beeny, curator of the exhibition,  said in a press statement. “Shrugging off academic convention, European artists experimented with pastels in new ways, revealing its limitless aesthetic possibilities and an exceptional range of colors and textures.”

One example of a pastel on display is that of French artist Redon’s portrait from 1900 called “Baronne de Domecy;” a pastel and graphite piece on light brown laid paper that depicts a baroness still and in a hypnotic gaze, seemingly removed from the floral delicate and blurred background, emphasizing her dream-like state.

Pastels were a much faster medium for artists to work with as it did not require the same amount of drying time as they were applied dryly or mashed into a pastel that could be swept onto a canvas with a brush.

Developed by the head curator of European Paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and former Associate Curator of Drawings at the Getty Museum, Beeny, the exhibition demonstrates the fine artistry of pastels in which some artists utilized their fingertips to accentuate a a personal and “touched-all-over” aesthetic to their textured and iridescent fine art.

The exhibition is on view at the Getty Center from Tuesday, March 15 to August 14.