Pastels · Lévy-Dhurmer 1865 - 1953

© Sophie Crépy

The exhibition "Pastels, from Millet to Redon" is presented from march, 14 to  July 2, 2023 in the Seine gallery of the Musée d'Orsay. Through a hundred or so works, it explores an incomparable collection of drawings and paintings made with this fragile medium by Millet, Degas, Manet, Cassatt, Redon, Lévy-Dhurmer and many others. Discover here what makes Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer a master of pastel.

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer started his artistic career as a ceramicist, his practice of pastel remaining in the shadows until 1896. His talent in using the technique came to light at a one-man exhibition devoted to him at the prestigious Georges Petit gallery in Paris.

Lévy-Dhurmer’s art was based on a great mastery of drawing and a confident line with very clear outlines. He would use shading on occasion to render skin texture and model his faces, particularly in the Portrait de Georges Rodenbach and La Femme à la médaille, but he also used tiny fine lines of pastel that could not be seen from a distance, in a highly graphic way, to shape his figures. The resulting animation of the surface played a part in the mysterious aura of his pastels. In his later works, like La Calanque, he juxtaposed a multitude of hatched or parallel lines with bright and often complementary shades to create surprising lightwaves.

Images
Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer
Portrait de Georges Rodenbach, vers 1895
Musée d'Orsay
Don Mme Georges Rodenbach, 1899
Droits réservés © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
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Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer
La Femme à la médaille, en 1896
Musée d'Orsay
Don Mme Zagorowski, 1972
Droits réservés © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
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Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer
La calanque, vers 1936
Musée d'Orsay
Don Mme Zagorowski, 1972
Droits réservés © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
See the notice of the artwork