PASTEL (Fr. pastel, from Lat. pastillus, little roll, lozenge, diminutive of panis, loaf. bread). Colored crayon. (See CRAYON.) Also, by abbreviation, the process of drawing in color by means of such crayon. The substance is gen erally sold in small cylinders. The paper used is not very smooth. The drawing is carried on exactly as with black and white drawing, with this distinction, that a color effect may be, and generally is, sought, depth of shade and grada tions of light and dark being replaced by grada tions in colors. One of the special difficulties with the pastel process is the perishable nature of the result. A sharp jar nr blow will dislodge some of the particles of color, and a touch of a soft brush or cloth will make a great sear in the colored surface. It is possible to remedy this in part by the use of a fixative: but a pastel drawing remains the most easily injured of all works of art. To guard against this, it is almost universally the custom to cover such a drawing with glass; and, moreover, the drawing must not touch the glass. Properly protected, a pastel may remain beautiful for a century and a half, as is seen in the very admirable drawings in the Louvre by French masters of the eighteenth cen tury. The special beauty of a pastel drawing is in its soft, velvety surface, giving a bloom and depth to the color harmonies hardly attainable elsewhere; but this beauty is at once marred when it is seen through the glass covering. It will be best, then, to risk the chance of injury to pastels of no special value, keeping them in closed portfolios; and, for those of great im portance, to have the glass arranged to open read fly.
On the whole, pastel seems more fitted for the sketching of an artist who cares for color than for any other purpose. It gives a great facility
to the artist who wishes to work rapidly, and who does not wish to wait while liquid washes or semi-liquid touches are drying.
There are crayon drawings in two or three col ors which (late from the sixteenth century, but pastel in the usual sense hardly appears before the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Rosalba Carriera of Venice (1675-1757), the most original of all woman artists, seems to have brought pastel drawing to its full charm during her stay in France, about 1720. The chief of all pastel-draughtsmen is generally admitted to be :Maurice Quentin de la Tour (in the eight eenth century), whose works are chiefly in the Louvre and in the Museum of Saint Quentin (Aisne). Jean Baptiste Greuze, in the eighteenth century, and Eugene Delacroix, in the nine teenth did admirable work in this way, and the Swede Lundberg, who died about 1780, is also famous, though his work is not much known out of Sweden.
The art underwent a sort of revival during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In Brussels, Emile Minters, a portraitist of real merit, and in France H. G. E. Degas, the impres sionist, have used pastel with surprising original ity. Other noted pastel artists of the present day are Pierre Carrier-Belleuse, Rene Gilbert, Emile Rene Menard. In the United States this medium has been used with success by William M. Chase, J. Appleton Brown, and especially by J. Wells Champney. Consult: Robert, Le Pastel (Paris, 1890) ; Jiinnicke, Kurze Anlcitung zur Tempera vrnd (Stuttgart, 1893) ; Retseher, Anlcitung zur Pastellmalcrei (4th ed., Dresden, 1900).