Portrait of Marthine Cappelen Hjort, b. Kiær, by Asta Nørregaard, pastel on canvas; roughly 48 x 33 inches (122 x 85 cm); link is to Wikimedia Commons; original is in the collection of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo Norway, which has a zoomable and downloadable version of the image.
This wonderful portrait by late 19th, early 20th century Norwegian artist Asta Nørregaard is one of those wonderful pastel “paintings” that belies the idea of pastel as a “drawing” medium. Depending on how finely you want to hash the semantics, pastel is both — sometimes simultaneously.
It helps remind us that our definitions are often inadequate to constrain the range of possibilities in art mediums.
In this beautifully realized portrait, Nørregaard has surrounded the finely rendered face and figure with more textural marks, the roughly circular direction of which combines with her control of value in the background to draw the eye inexorably to the sitter’s face.
