Pastel

CAT. 20

Sand Carts on the Banks of the Seine

Coloured chalks, 52 by 82 cm (20 ½ by 32 ¼ ins)

Pastel

A number of Luard’s most successful works were executed in pastel, a favourite medium of many of the French realist painters who influenced him. These were often executed on a remarkably impressive scale, a notable example being Stone Cart: A Bird’s Eye View of 1926 (see cat.60), a composition which he later worked into an etching. This drawing was chosen as one of only a couple of historical works to represent the Pastel Society (where Luard was an exhibitor) in the exhibition Pure Gold: Five Hundred Years of the Federation of British Artists held at the Mall Galleries in 2011. Luard’s ability to harness the contrasting bright highlighting and dark colouring which is characteristic of this medium also recalls the work of the English painter George Clausen. Luard would have been aware of Clausen as perhaps the most important English artist to be influenced by French realism in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The two artists later became great friends and correspondents when Luard became Clausen’s near neighbour, following Luard’s move to St John’s Wood in the early 1930s.