Nicolas Party pays homage to Rosalba Carriera, the rococo queen of pastels, in a new installation at Frick

Ten years ago, Nicolas Party came to use what is today his signature tool: pastels. Drawn to the medium for its ability to capture soft, glossy gradients – another hallmark of the Swiss artist’s work – he began to trace its use through art history.

Eventually, Party met Rosalba Carriera, an 18th-century Venetian Rococo painter considered the queen of pastels. Rosalba – who was successful enough in her day that even today she is referred to only by her first name – popularized this once marginalized medium, using it to animate her portraits of aristocrats across Europe. .

“She really transformed these people [with] incredible energy,” Party said, his admiration for his ancestor still strong. What excited her most was how Rosalba exploited the material properties of pastels to emphasize the theatricality of her time – a brief period before the French Revolution when the make-up industry boomed, large dresses and wigs were all the rage and the kind felt. a little more fluid.

This moment, Party continued, “was subversive in many ways, and Rosalba was a key part of that aesthetic.”

Nicholas’ party Drapery (Jean-Étienne Liotard, The Sultana Reading, A Lady in Turkish Costume Reading on a Couch) (2023), with Portrait (2023). Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr.

Now Party once again revisits his love of the rococo genius. At the Frick Collection in New York, he created a site-specific installation inspired by Rosalba Portrait of a Man in Pilgrim Costume, created around 1730.

The canvas, one of two works by Rosalba bequeathed to the Frick in 2020, by the late publisher Alexis Gregory, does not actually depict a pilgrim, but rather a person donning a pilgrim’s costume for Venice’s famous carnival celebration. He is joined on the adjacent walls by a pair of Party portraits created in response to Rosalba’s original.

But while the project is a tribute to Rosalba, it’s also a simple celebration of his and Party’s favorite instrument. The three works in the installation are mounted on murals depicting floating drapes, all inspired by those found in the paintings of two other pastel masters: Étienne Liotard and Maurice-Quentin de La Tour.

“With pastels,” Party said, “you have a more intimate and deeper involvement with the medium itself.”

Nicholas’ party Drapery (Jean-Étienne Liotard, The Chocolate Girl) (2023) with Portrait (2023). Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr.

The Frick installation is not the artist’s first project organized around the medium or Rosalba. In 2020, he organizes a show called “Pastelat the Flag Art Foundation, which included one of the many Rosalba pieces he owns: Three quarter portrait of a woman. It was through this exhibition that Party met Xavier Salomon, deputy director and chief curator of Frick’s. They bonded through a love for the 18th century artist, but also through a discovery linked to his work.

During a studio visit around this time, the pair removed the Portrait of a lady of its frame. Sandwiched between the canvas and its frame, they found a tiny woodcut – a portrait of the Magi, or the three kings who brought gifts to Jesus after he was born.

Later, Solomon would discover that other Rosalba paintings also had tiny imprints of the Magi pinched inside. (Portrait of a Man in Pilgrim Costume didn’t have one, unfortunately.) For the artist, the print was “essentially a lucky charm,” Party explained, one she included when shipping pastels—a notoriously fragile medium—on many long distances. His hope was that the Three Kings would protect the paintings, just as they protected their gifts from gold, incenseAnd myrrh in their journey to Christ.

“It was a really amazing moment,” Party recalled. “The last person who touched this [part of the painting] washing machine. We felt like Indiana Jones!

“Nicolas Party and Rosalba Carriera” is on view until March 3, 2024 at the Frick Collection in New York.

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