Art Encyclopedia - Conté
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Conté
Conté is a synthetic black, red, brown or white chalk. Unlike pastel, conté is cohesive
to paper but it has the same soft and diffuse quality of pastels. Conté makes a suggestive line
that when used in mass over a rough grained paper has the quality of light and shadow with the blacks
not uniform but flecked with white. The conté sticks' square profile makes it more suitable for
detailed hatched work as opposed to the bolder 'painterly' drawing style demanded by soft pastels.
Conté were invented in 1795 by Nicolas-Jacques Conté, who created the combination of
clay and graphite in response to the shortage of graphite caused by the Napoleonic Wars. Conté
crayons had the advantage of being cost-effective to produce, and easy to manufacture in controlled
grades of hardness. They are now more commonly made of a variety of fabricated chalk. Conté
were extensively used by the Renaissance Old Masters in a variant called Sanguine, which has become
the name of the reddest sepia tone of Conté.