In Search of the Perfect Blue

Tucked away in a Parisian courtyard sits the oldest pastel maker in the world: La Maison du Pastel.

For over 300 years, the atelier has mixed and rolled pigments by hand to produce a rainbow assortment of pastel sticks in almost every shade imaginable: Parakeet Green, Prussian Blue, and newly crafted fluorescent hues. When pharmacist and chemist Henri Roché acquired the shop in 1879, he consulted with famous artists of the time—Edgar Degas and Odilon Redon among them—to understand what they wanted in a pastel. The studio has continued its legacy of handcrafting and color matching pastels, creating an array of shades tailored to artists’ needs.

Today, the shop’s floor-to-ceiling shelves are brimming with pastel sticks in over 2,000 unique colors. “When you visit the store, there’s this Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sense of awe,” says Getty Assistant Curator of Drawings Danielle Canter. “You can really ask for anything, and you will get overwhelmed by the options.”

But on a visit last year, Canter was looking for a color that couldn’t be found: a muted blue used by Degas in his drawing Après le bain (Femme s’essuyant) (After the Bath [Woman Drying Herself]), from about 1895.

Canter visited La Maison du Pastel as part of “Exploring the Materiality of Powdered Colors,” a traveling seminar that examined the making and preservation of pastels across Paris and Amsterdam. Led by the University of Amsterdam and supported by Getty’s Paper Project initiative, the program gave Canter and other curators, conservators, and conservation scientists hands-on experience with the medium through visits to museum collections, lectures, and even the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and make their own pastel sticks.

At La Maison du Pastel, the group examined archival records, sample boards, and a selection of 19th-century pigments before exploring its storefront—a rare treat, since the shop is typically only open for a few hours one day a week. Canter seized the opportunity to curate a small box of pastels as a gift for her colleague and close collaborator Michelle Sullivan, a paper conservator at Getty who had planned to attend the seminar but unfortunately was not able to go.

Armed with a postcard of the drawing (one of Sullivan’s favorite artworks in Getty’s collection), Canter and shop proprietors Isabelle Roché and Margaret Zayer got to work selecting pastels that matched those used by Degas. When the perfect blue couldn’t be found, the studio set out to create it, producing a new color that reflects a long-standing spirit of experimentation and collaboration.

Say hello to Seafoam

Après le bain is incredibly vibrant, filled with intricate patterns and a flurry of colors. The group looked closely at a few of those shades spanning a deep orange, lavender, teal, and a nude found in the woman’s skin to fill out their box of pastel sticks. But they couldn’t quite find a match for a blue used in a piece of fabric draped over a sofa in the background.

Canter brought home a similar shade, but Zayer remained determined to continue the search long after the seminar had concluded. She oversees color formulation at the studio and is no stranger to developing new shades following the shop’s centuries-old techniques. After digging into the archives, Zayer knew that if the blue had been a color offered by the shop, it would have been either Mountain Blue or Celadon Blue. And if it wasn’t, she now had a starting point to home in on possible pigment combinations.

“I took this less as a challenge to re-create something exactly but more so to capture the essence of the color so that other artists can benefit from it today and in the future,” Zayer says.

Zayer and Canter exchanged texts about the drawing, swapping photos of the work and hypotheses around which pastel color families Degas might have used. Zayer ultimately landed on a new hue tentatively called Seafoam as a nod to California and the Netherlands. La Maison du Pastel’s shopkeepers hope to put a new color range with different saturations of the blue into production in the future.

“Seafoam will enter a tapestry of not only colors but stories of inspiration and encounters that shape the Roché pastel collection,” Zayer says. “As guardians of these collections and old recipe books going back as far as the 1800s, we carry a responsibility beyond our own heritage to contribute what we can to art historical research and conservation, especially surrounding such important practitioners of pastels like Degas.”

Training that leaves a lasting mark

Back at the Getty Center, Canter gifted the pastel set to Sullivan, who is now utilizing the sticks to create reconstructions for teaching students and the public about historical pastel drawing methods and techniques. Working with scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute, she has also been using a set of antique pastels from La Maison du Pastel, dating to the late 19th century, to test how pastel colorants fade over time. For drawings specialists like Canter and Sullivan, working with pastels can be tricky. Pastel drawings are particularly sensitive to light and movement, meaning extra care and expertise are required to safely handle these materials and artworks.

“Working closely with La Maison du Pastel has provided us an incredible opportunity to understand more about both historical pastel manufacture and the evolution of these materials through the present day,” Sullivan says. “Through our testing, we hope to gain new insights into the light sensitivity of pigments and dyes used in 19th-century pastels that will help us better care for Getty’s pastel collection. We also hope that sharing what we learn will benefit others who care for these beautiful but sensitive works of art.”

Canter’s other experiences during the traveling seminar have also left her with a deeper understanding of the medium and how to better care for pastel drawings. She visited museum conservation labs and storage spaces, got a close look at modern pastel manufacturing processes, and donned a lab coat and goggles to create her own brightly colored pastel sticks with various binders, pigments, and additives.

“We took the time to make drawings with our pastel sticks and compare the different qualities to manufactured or handmade pastel sticks (like those from La Maison du Pastel),” Canter explains. “You could experiment with what it’s like to draw in different ways. There’s no better way to understand these materials than through making and drawing.”

The seminar left a lasting mark on Canter’s curatorial practice. The close study of these materials across collections gave her new insights into their care and display, which proved especially valuable in developing Getty’s recent Odilon Redon: Otherworldly Visions exhibition, which includes several of Redon’s pastels.

“You’re so much more informed when you’re able to get an idea of how an artist may have been working,” Canter says. “Getting to see different techniques and how artists played with their materials was so special. We have a really excellent pastel collection at Getty, and it’s made me look at the objects we have here differently.”

Take a closer look at Après le bain

In this video, Sullivan digs into the details of Degas’s artwork, revealing some of the techniques he used to create it.