Saturday, May 20, 2017

Pastel Legacy of Rosalba Carriera in France

Rosalba Carriera
Portrait of Louis XV of France
at about age ten

ca. 1720-21
pastel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Rosalba Carriera
Portrait of singer Faustina Bordoni
ca. 1724-25
pastel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

"While the guest of French banker Pierre Crozat in Paris, Rosalba Carriera created portraits of Louis XV as a child and of other members of the French aristocracy and court. While there, she developed a friendship with Antoine Watteau, who had a significant impact on her work.  She, in turn, had a formative influence on Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Etienne Liotard, and other important pastel painters. King George III collected her works, and Frederick-Augustus II, elector of Saxony, filled a room in his Dresden palace with more than one hundred of her pastels [including those reproduced above]."

 curator's notes from the Getty Museum

Maurice-Quentin de La Tour
Portrait of Gabriel Bernard de Rieux
1739-41
pastel and gouache on paper mounted on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Maurice-Quentin de La Tour
Portrait of Pierre-Louis Laideguive
1761
pastel
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Jean-Louis Buisson-Boissier
ca. 1762-66
pastel on vellum
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of John, Lord Mountstuart
1763
pastel on vellum
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

François Boucher
Standing Model
ca. 1750
pastel
Albertina, Vienna

François Boucher
Portrait of Madame de Pompadour
1754
pastel
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin
Self-portrait with visor
ca. 1776
pastel
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Delaroche
Portrait of Madame de Therville
ca. 1828-30
pastel
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Edgar Degas
Young woman in blue
1884
pastel
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Edgar Degas
After the bath
ca. 1884-86
pastel
Musée d'art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre

Édouard Manet
Woman wearing a hat with silk gauze
1881
pastel
Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan

Édouard Manet
Portrait of Méry Laurent
ca. 1882
pastel
Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo