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Secrets and other curiosities

En la sombrerería. Edgar Degas

Degas and the secret of his pastels

Patent document for the fixative created by painter Luigi Chialiva
Documento de la patente del fijativo creado por el pintor Luigi Chialiva

Underlying the technique employed in Edgar Degas’s At the Milliners is an unprecedented formula. The artist sought to master the pastel medium by creating successive layers of colour, transparencies and contrasts. To achieve this, he needed a fixative that would allow him to work without smudging the colours. But there was a problem... he did not like the fixatives available on the market because they altered the tones.

His friend Luigi Chialiva created a unique fixative for him that was capable of preserving the purity of the colours intact while fixing each layer. Chialiva managed to develop a formula that met Degas's requirements and could be used without altering the natural colour of the pastel sticks in the slightest and even less the matte finish that he so desired.

The fixative enabled him to build up successive layers as needed, superimposing different colours and gradually creating the desired volumes or effects.

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Detail of the visible image of the painting “At the Milliner's”, by Edgar Degas
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Mastery of colour in Degas

The pastel is superbly executed “At the Milliner’s”. Degas recreates the different textures of the hats and the women’s clothing, in which feathers, flowers and raffia are distinguishable, in a lively and vibrant manner using these coloured sticks. We can also see how the colours are applied in various layers without mixing, even though our eyes perceive them to be blended.
Image of the reverse side of Degas' painting, “At the Milliner's”
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The turquoise-blue back

For this work “At the Milliner’s”, Degas used a semi-industrially mounted support consisting of an ordinary paperboard base some 7 mm thick, reinforced on both sides with turquoise or blue-green paper.

 
Detail of the X-ray of the painting by Degas, “At the Milliner's”
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A button "At the Milliner’s"

X-radiography detected a very curious element trapped in this work: a button.

In the nineteenth century paperboards were produced using a coarse wood pulp.  The mixture could contain traces of other materials such as cloth, esparto grass, straw, or even fishing nets.
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