Drawing with charcoal: historical techniques of 19th-century France

These charred wood pieces produce a range of tones. Easily reworked, they’re also easily lost without a fixative.

Charcoal drawing techniques were perfected in France in the 19th century and taken to new expressive heights by artists such as Georges Seurat and Odilon Redon. This video includes a demonstration of those techniques.

Cite this page as: The J. Paul Getty Museum, "Drawing with charcoal: historical techniques of 19th-century France," in Smarthistory, May 5, 2017, accessed January 21, 2025, https://smarthistory.org/drawing-with-charcoal-historical-techniques-of-19th-century-france/.