The J. Paul Getty Museum presents Powder and Light: Late 19th-Century Pastels, an exhibition tracing the evolution of pastels from Impressionism to Symbolism, featuring works from the Getty collection including Edgar Degas, Odilon Redon, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and more. The exhibition is on view at the Getty Center from March 15 to August 14, 2022.

“The medium of pastel, once considered stuffy and old-fashioned, experienced a surge in popularity during the last quarter of the 19th century,” said Emily Beeny, curator of the exhibition. “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.”

Presenting examples from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century, this exhibition shines a light on a myriad of pastel styles used by artists during a period of radical experimentation.

For Impressionists of the 1870s and 1880s, pastels provided an efficient means of recording the visible world, capturing changes of weather and light. For members of the subsequent Symbolist movement, many turned inward, using pastels to conjure a realm of dreams and imagination.

The invention of synthetic dyes gave pastel sticks an iridescent palette. They could be applied dry or crumbled into a paste and laid on with a brush. Some artists manipulated the medium with their fingertips, lending a sensuous, touched-all-over quality to their artworks. These varied means of application resulted in a range of textures, from gauzy to opaque. Since pastels did not require painstaking layering or lengthy drying times, they also promised a swifter, more immediate mode of working than oil paint.

Powder and Light: Late 19th-Century Pastels is curated by Emily Beeny, curator in charge of European Paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and former Associate Curator of Drawings at the Getty Museum.