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

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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.

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.”

Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, 1901, pastel on blue wove paper, Florian Carr Fund, 2013.102.2

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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

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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.”

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

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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

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Käthe Kollwitz, Self-Portrait as a Young Woman, c. 1900, pastel on laid paper, Gift of Robert and Chris Petteys, 1995.56.1

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George Luks, Breadline, 1900, pastel on paperboard, Corcoran Collection (Estate of Susie Brummer), 2015.19.2950

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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

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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

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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

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

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