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The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

September 29, 2019 – January 26, 2020
West Building, Ground Floor, East Outer Tier Galleries

William Merritt Chase, Study of Flesh Color and Gold, 1888, pastel on paper coated with mauve-gray grit (on strainer), overall: 45.7 x 33 cm (18 x 13 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Raymond J. and Margaret Horowitz

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Known for its brilliant colors and its delicate, velvety texture, pastel is one of the most versatile and beautiful materials in the history of art. Artists have found innumerable ways to use it, from glowing portraits in the eighteenth century to the shimmering landscapes of the impressionists, to the abstract compositions of the twentieth century. Fabricated from a paste of pigment, white opaque filler, and binder, shaped into sticks and dried, pastel is an almost endlessly adaptable medium: it can be used wet or dry, by drawing directly with the intact stick, or by grinding it to a powder and applying it with a brush.

Featuring 64 exquisite examples drawn entirely from the permanent collection, The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art traces the history of pastel from the Renaissance to the 21st century and examines the many techniques that artists have developed to work with this colorful medium. Included are drawings by eighteenth-century virtuosos such as Rosalba Carriera and Jean-Étienne Liotard; innovative works by Edgar Degas, James McNeill Whistler, and others whose experiments and technical skills revived interest in the medium in the nineteenth century; and rare examples by artists who only took up pastels on occasion, among them Henri Matisse and Roy Lichtenstein. Because pastel is such a fragile medium, these works have seldom, if ever, been exhibited. The Touch of Color will be on view at the National Gallery of Art from September 29, 2019, through January 26, 2020.

The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Jacopo Bassano, The Mocking of Christ, 1568, colored chalks on blue laid paper, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1980.30.1
Shown from the chest up, a young woman with pale, smooth skin and dressed in a light blue gown holds a paint brush and palette in this vertical pastel drawing. The woman’s body is angled to our right. She turns her head back to our left but then looks back off to our right from the corners of her eyes under faint brows. Her wide-set eyes are gray, her nose long and straight, and her delicate pink lips are closed in a slight smile. Her curly, ash-blond hair sweeps back from her forehead to gather in a braid across the crown of her head. Soft, loose tendrils frame her round face, which has touches of ice-blue shadows at the corners of her mouth and eyes. Sky-blue and white flowers with mint-green leaves adorn her hair to our left, and two touches of royal blue near her ear on our right suggests a ribbon. Gleaming white pearl earrings hang from her ears. Her dress is created with filmy layers of arctic blue, taupe, white, and pale pink. The gown has a deep, V-shaped neckline, and a long sleeve is turned back from the wrist we can see. In that hand, she holds the wooden paintbrush at about chest height, and it extends off the right edge of the sheet. In the lower right corner of the composition, the thumb of her other hand hooks through a hole in the palette, which has daubs of pink and white. The corner of a blank easel is visible over her shoulder to our right. The background is mouse gray tinged with the blue of the paper on which it is drawn.
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Rosalba Carriera, Allegory of Painting, 1730s, pastel and red chalk on blue laid paper mounted on canvas (on strainer), Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.136
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Claude Dupouch, c. 1739, pastel on blue laid paper mounted on canvas (on stretcher/strainer), Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.76
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Portrait of a Man, c. 1757, pastel on blue laid paper, mounted on canvas (on strainer/stretcher), Woodner Collection, 1991.182.7
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Frederick North, Later Fifth Earl of Guilford, in Rome, 1790, pastel and gouache(?) with touches of graphite on paper mounted to canvas (on strainer/stretcher), Gift of the 50th Anniversary Gift Committee, 1991.86.1
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, A Fashionable Noblewoman Wearing a Plumed Hat, c. 1789, pastel on blue laid paper mounted on canvas (on strainer/stretcher), New Century Fund, 1999.92.1
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Paul Huet, A Meadow at Sunset, c. 1845, pastel on gray-blue paper, Purchased as a Gift in Memory of Melvin R. Seiden, 2013.196.3
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Jean-François Millet, Calling Home the Cows, c. 1866, pastel and conté crayon on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.136.178
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Edgar Degas, Young Woman Dressing Herself, 1885, pastel over charcoal on tan wove(?) paper mounted on board, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.9
We look across a river at an arched bridge spanning the width of this horizontal landscape. Created with smudges of pastel almost entirely in tones of cream and bright white, pale lavender purple, soft teal, and the faintest sky blue, the bridge seems nearly lost in a bright fog. The straight deck of the bridge divides the composition in half, though it angles slightly away from us toward the right. The four low arches of the bridge are powder blue and lilac purple with cobalt blue shadows underneath. Blended areas of light, spring green, azure blue, and pale yellow create a hazy sky above. Vertical lines in ultramarine blue could be smokestacks or towers in the distance on the far bank. The blue paper is visible and has darkened at the edges of the sheet. The artist signed the work in smoke gray in the lower right corner: “Claude Monet.”
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, 1901, pastel on blue wove paper, Florian Carr Fund, 2013.102.2
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Childe Hassam, Au Grand Prix de Paris (At the Grand Prix de Paris), 1887, pastel over graphite on paperboard coated with sawdust, Corcoran Collection (Bequest of James Parmelee), 2014.79.39
Shown from the hips up, a mostly nude woman with pale skin and dark hair pulled up into a loose bun sits with her back to us in this vertical pastel. Touches of sunshine yellow, scarlet red, and black suggest a pattern on the spring green cloth loosely encircling her hips along the bottom edge of the paper. She seems to hold her hands in front of her body so her elbows are bent and she looks down, perhaps at something in her lap. Her black hair is flecked with white to suggest glinting light. The background is filled with a golden yellow field interspersed with hazy turquoise, tomato red, sky blue, and black shapes. It is loosely rendered with pastel to create a blurry effect. Eventually it becomes evident that it is a Japanese screen with clusters of people, landscape, and perhaps a courtyard. The artist signed the work with red letters near the woman’s right hip: “Wm M Chase.”
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

William Merritt Chase, Study of Flesh Color and Gold, 1888, pastel on paper coated with mauve-gray grit (on strainer), Gift of Raymond J. and Margaret Horowitz, 2007.94.2
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Camille Pissarro, A Peasant Girl in a Straw Hat, c. 1892, pastel over charcoal on beige laid paper, Gift of Evelyn Stefansson Nef and Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke, 1998.144.1
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Käthe Kollwitz, Self-Portrait as a Young Woman, c. 1900, pastel on laid paper, Gift of Robert and Chris Petteys, 1995.56.1
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

George Luks, Breadline, 1900, pastel on paperboard, Corcoran Collection (Estate of Susie Brummer), 2015.19.2950
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Everett Shinn, Fifth Avenue Bus, 23rd Street and Broadway, 1914, pastel and charcoal on rough wove paper, laid down on board, Bequest of Julia B. Engel, 1984.58.9
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Roy Lichtenstein, Untitled (Six Figures), 1948, pastel on unprimed muslin on paperboard, Gift of Renée Tolcott in honor of her brother, Roy Lichtenstein, 2011.133.1
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Jasper Johns, Untitled (from Untitled 1972), 1975/1976, pastel and graphite on gray Japanese paper, Gift of Jasper Johns, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1990.107.1
The Touch of Color Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

G. Daniel Massad, Breach, 2009, pastel on gray wove paper, Gift of the Artist in memory of his parents, 2018.17.1

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Sponsors: The exhibition is made possible by a generous grant from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust.

Passes: Admission is always free and passes are not required

Attendance: 96,625

Brochure: The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art by Stacey Sell. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2019. 

Bassano, Jacopo
Italian, 1510 - 1592
Carriera, Rosalba
Italian, 1675 - 1757
Chase, William Merritt
American, 1849 - 1916
Degas, Edgar
French, 1834 - 1917
Hamilton, Hugh Douglas
Irish, 1739 - 1808
Hassam, Childe
American, 1859 - 1935
Huet, Paul
French, 1803 - 1869
Johns, Jasper
American, 1930 -
Kollwitz, Käthe
German, 1867 - 1945
La Tour, Maurice-Quentin de
French, 1704 - 1788
Labille-Guiard, Adélaïde
French, 1749 - 1803
Lichtenstein, Roy
American, 1923 - 1997
Liotard, Jean-Étienne
Swiss, 1702 - 1789
Luks, George
American, 1866 - 1933
Massad, G. Daniel
American, 1946 -
Matisse, Henri
French, 1869 - 1954
Millet, Jean-François
French, 1814 - 1875
Monet, Claude
French, 1840 - 1926
Perronneau, Jean-Baptiste
French, 1715 - 1783
Pissarro, Camille
French, 1830 - 1903
Shinn, Everett
American, 1873 - 1953
Whistler, James McNeill
American, 1834 - 1903

Lectures
Introduction to the Exhibition—The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art
September 29 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium

Gallery Talks
Conversations with Artists: G. Daniel Massad with Eric Denker
November 22 at 11:00 and 2:00
(60 minutes)
West Building Lecture Hall

Watch the program here.

Introduction to the Exhibition—The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art
Video, Released: November 19, 2019, (39:53 minutes)
Introduction to the Exhibition—The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art
Audio, Released: November 19, 2019, (39:53 minutes)
Press Event: The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art
Audio, Released: September 24, 2019, (39:39 minutes)