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Baetjer, Katharine. "Portrait Painting in England, 1600–1800." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
By 1750, almost 2,500 professional artists and amateurs were working in pastel in Paris alone. Portraits in pastel were commissioned by all ranks of society, but most enthusiastically by the royal family, members of the court, and the wealthy middle classes. Eighteenth-century pastels are brightly colored, highly finished, often of large dimensions, and elaborately framed, evoking oil painting, the medium to which they were invariably compared. The powdery texture of pastel and its diffuse, velvety quality were particularly suited to capturing the fleeting expressions that characterize the most life-like portraits. Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe includes some forty pastels, belonging to the Metropolitan Museum and, with important exceptions, to museums and private collections in the New York area. It presents Italian, French, and English works, supplemented by several German, Swiss, and American examples.
Charles Antoine Coypel (French, Paris 1694–1752 Paris)
Date: 1743Accession Number: 2011.84
Benedetto Luti (Italian, Florence 1666–1724 Rome)
Date: 1717Accession Number: 2007.360
Date: 1717Accession Number: 2007.361
Rosalba Carriera (Italian, Venice 1673–1757 Venice)
Date: 1730–31Accession Number: 2002.22
Anton Raphael Mengs (German, Aussig (Ústi nad Labem) 1728–1779 Rome)
Date: ca. 1754Accession Number: 2005.231
John Singleton Copley (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1738–1815 London)
Date: 1765Accession Number: 08.1b
Date: ca. 1767Accession Number: 2008.249.2
Date: 18th centuryAccession Number: 1974.25
Jean Claude Richard, Abbé de Saint-Non (French, Paris 1727–1791 Paris)
Date: 1770Accession Number: 1977.383
