Pont du Gard

Soft Pastels are the purest form of artist color, made almost exclusively from pure artist pigment with only enough binder to allow them to be formed into useable sticks. Their colors remain brilliant and last long after oil paintings begin to crack and fade. The paper is acid-free, lignin-free, archival, and it will not yellow, darken, become brittle, or deteriorate in any way for 100+ years. Historically, pastels can be traced back to the 16th century and have been used by many famous artists, but they became especially popular in the 19th century. Delacroix, Manet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler, Degas, and Mary Cassatt all used pastels for finished work as well as for sketches.