Original pastel drawings are actually chalk art. With many turn-of-the-century households tiring of chromolithographs and other machine-produced prints, beginning around 1880-90 certain artists began catering to this growing segment of the American population who preferred to hang original art in their houses rather than prints. Pastel art could be produced quickly (often in only a few hours)...and inexpensively...which meant that it was affordable to a large segment of American households, especially those who could not afford finer oil and water-color paintings by better known artists.

Frankly, very little is known about most early 20th c. pastel artists. Aside from William Henry Chandler and a handful of others pastel artists, there is practically no documentation that we have been able to locate on the vast majority of pastels that we come across.

We published an in-depth article on William Henry Chandler in 2001 which is included in this Pastel Gallery. June Rhode of Egg Harbor WI released a book titled The Power of Pastels in 2000 which covered the works of Chandler, Glatthaar, Gunderson, Linder, and several other pastel artists. But other than this, we have been able to locate very little that has been published in this field.

Hopefully that will soon change. Quality early 20th c. pastels have become much more collectible, are becoming much more difficult to locate, and are generally increasing in price...all of which suggest that early 20th c. American pastel art has now been discovered by thousands of collectors who for so many years ignored them. As more is learned about many of these un-discovered artists, interest will continue to increase.