Margaret Larlham, Golden Hour, soft pastel, 18 x 24.
Pastels have earned respect in the art world over the last few centuries. These soft sticks of saturated pigment provide artists with a smooth, buttery texture and chromatic luminosity that no other medium can match in quite the same way. Pastels gained wide acclaim in the 18th century as a favored medium for portraits, and well loved French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas—who preferred pastels—has been credited for elevating the light-diffusing pigments to new heights in the late 19th century. In the following pages, discover pastelists whose wide-ranging works prove there’s no style, genre, or subject this brilliant medium can’t enhance.