Put your gouache paints aside! From June 7 to September 10, 2018, the Louvre museum offers an exhibition devoted to the reference collection of French pastels retained in the museum. A highlight of this kind of creation of an extreme fragility since pastels are created “from colored dust we often compared to the one covering the wings of a butterfly”.

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Maurice Quantin de La Tour, François Boucher, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin and even Jean-Marc Nattier… They all worked with pastel and marked the art with their methods and technics of this kind of creation.

An exhibition also allowing you to discover their genius and to measure it since the exhibited works are not plain sketches or preparatory studies, as it’s usually done with pastel, but are “works themselves painted on a support allowing to frame them”.

All in all, 120 pastels from the 18^th century are on display. They come from the Louvre collection and have been restored thanks to the foundation American Friends of the Louvre patronage.

Practical information:
Pastels
Louvre museum, Rotonde Sully Sud
From June 7 to September 10, 2018
Address: Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris

(Credits: ©Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN – Grand Palais / Martine Beck-Coppola)