Pair of oval-shaped pastels, representing two portraits of elegant young women, in evening dress.
The brunette, with a brown horn comb in her hair, in the Andalusian style, and the rosebud in her ear, wears a delicate plum silk dress, adorned with a beaded collar, enhanced with a row of pearls.
The blonde, the slightly mutinous eye, in profile, the short curly frizzy hair, held by a daisy headband, on the forehead. The black lace dress, thin, highlights a delicate neckline, as well as a gold necklace.
These pastels are signed C.PETIT and dated 1923 (or 29).
Gilded wooden frames carved with flowers in very good condition (rare gilding)
Pastel was probably invented in France and Italyat the end of the XV century and was used by Leonardo da Vinci.
Pastel will be very popular from the seventeenth century, especially to evoke the rendering of fabrics, but also the delicacy of the art of portraiture; It is used by many painters such as the very illustrious Charles Le Brun.
The golden age of Pastel is undeniably the eighteenth century. used by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, the "prince of pastellists", or even, Chardin, Perronneau.
The Revolution will make this technique fall into disuse, in the face of oil painting.
He finds the golds, thanks to the Impressionists, Edgar Degas, and Toulouse Lautrec, also thanks to the Nabis, such as Edouard Vuillard. And finally, apogee at the end of the nineteenth century, with the symbolist movement, which Levy Dhurmer or Odilon Redon perfectly illustrate."