by Allison Malafronte

Landscape With the Dance of the Farmers by Claude Lorrain, ca. 1637, oil, 28⅜ x 38⅜. Collection Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

The term plein air--a French phrase meaning “in the open air”— has long been associated with the act of painting outdoors directly from nature, alla prima. This style of painting is often traced back to its first followers in 17th- and 18th-century Rome, followed by the French Impressionists in the mid to late 19th century, and then to the California Impressionists in early 20th-century America. From the start, the purpose of the plein air movement was to develop a deeper understanding of nature through close observation and study, and to learn how to accurately represent the appearance of the landscape under the ever-changing elements of light, atmosphere, and weather.

Landscape With a Calm by Nicolas Poussin, oil, 38¼ x 52⅛. Collection the  The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California.

As painting en plein air grew from its European roots to an international movement, the genre of landscape painting began to be taken more seriously among those influential in the art world, and on-site sketches and studies were considered worthy of exhibition and sale, even if they were only preparatory for larger studio work. Suddenly, painting outdoors was considered a sophisticated activity, as collectors clamored for plein air paintings executed in exotic locales or faraway countries as a way to travel vicariously through the artist. The advent of portable plein air materials—such as paint tubes in the late 1870s and the retractable French easel shortly thereafter—further encouraged artists to join this exciting movement and fostered a tradition so far-reaching and enduring that four centuries after its inception, plein air painters around the world are still capturing timeless interpretations of the fields, hills, trees, and coastlines that define their native land.

Forest of Fontainebleau by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, 1834, oil. Collection National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

The Birth of Plein Air Painting in Europe

Although the genre of landscape painting was officially legitimized by French artists Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) and Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)—who, by executing on-site sketches and then finished paintings of the Roman Campagna in 17th-century Baroque Rome, defied the belief that landscape was a nonclassical genre—the official plein air movement began during the 18th century’s Age of Enlightenment and the early 19th-century’s Romantic movement, when poets, philosophers, and artists turned to nature to find peace, solace, and the presence of God. The first and greatest landscape artist to emerge during this time was the French artist Camille Corot (1796-1875), who, in 1825, spent two years exploring the Roman countryside with oil studies that inspired countless landscape painters to begin recording truthful observations of nature.

The Hay Wain by John Constable, 1821, oil, 51 x 73. Collection National Gallery, London, England.

One such artist influenced by the newly forming plein air tradition was John Constable (1776-1837), an English painter known for his sweeping outdoor scenes filled with architectural wonders and a sentimental pride for England’s luxuriant countryside. Like Claude and Corot, Constable believed that landscape painting must be based on observable facts and not cliché formulas. The more time Constable spent outdoors painting from life, the more intrigued he became with the sky, light, and atmosphere of the landscape and was said to have studied these elements with a meteorologist’s accuracy. The artist’s fidelity to nature and interest in atmospheric effects inspired the movement known as the Barbizon School, an informal group of mid 18th-century French artists—including Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), and Charles- François Daubigny (1817-1878)—who settled in the village of Barbizon on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau to paint scenes of rural life. Following in the footsteps of Corot and Constable, this group’s focus on extracting emotional significance from the light and tone of the landscape became the foundation of the forthcoming Impressionist movement.

Red Boats, Argenteuil by Claude Monet, 1875, oil, 23½ x 31⅝. Collection Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In the late 1800s Claude Monet (1840-1926) and his friend Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) pioneered the French Impressionist movement as they used loose, heavy brushstrokes and multiple flecks of color to recreate the light effects found in an overall impression of a scene. Although they were considered radicals of the academic movement, the Impressionists’ style was actually deeply rooted in realism, but it was also inspired by new optical theories on the way the eye processes visual information. Monet, Renoir, Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and others believed that what one sees in nature is not form but rather light on form, and that light can be conveyed through obvious brushstrokes of unmixed, intense colors. Taking their painting gear outdoors and advocating the idea of a new way of seeing through direct observation, the Impressionists created spontaneous, intensely colored, light-filled paintings that soon became a standard for truthfully conveying the outdoor experience.

Coming to America: Impressionism in California

Incoming Tide by Guy Rose, ca. 1917, oil, 24 x 29. Private collection. Image courtesy Irvine Museum, Irvine, California.

News of France’s revolutionary landscape-painting style and approach traveled quickly to other countries, and many Americans—including Californian Guy Rose (1867-1925)—went abroad to study with Monet. Rose bought a cottage in Giverny and resided there for 13 years to fully immerse himself in the Impressionist’s approach for interpreting the landscape. When he returned to Pasadena, he joined several other Californian artists who were painting en plein air the coastlines, mountains, and floral vegetation that the defined the state. Like Monet, Rose would often paint the same scene at different times of the day, and he developed a particular penchant for the coastal beauty of the Laguna Beach, Carmel, and Monterey areas.

Saddleback Mountain, Mission Viejo by William Wendt, 1923, oil, 30 x 40. Private collection. Image courtesy Irvine Museum, Irvine, California.

With its clear, intense light and pleasant climate, California became the ideal place to usher in the American Impressionist plein air movement, and artists from all over the country and world began flocking to the Golden State during the early 1900s. Like the pioneers of the plein air genre, California artists such as John Gamble (1863-1957), Paul Grimm (1892-1974), Edgar Payne (1882-1947), and William Wendt (1865-1946) saw light as the defining factor in the landscape and extolled its virtues as a divine creative instrument. Suddenly, all areas of the country known for remarkable light became destinations for proponents of plein air painting, and outdoor-painting artist colonies soon spang up around the nation.

Plein Air Painting Movements in America

Mount Etna From Taormina by Thomas Cole, 1843, oil, 78⅝ x 120⅝. Collection Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.

Few of the American landscape-painting groups defined the plein air genre better than the first official school of painters native to the United States, the Hudson River School. This group of early 19th-century painters founded and led by Thomas Cole (1801-1848) documented the nation’s changing identity as its uninhabited land slowly became settled. Established in the early 1800s—around the same time Corot was exploring the Roman countrysides—these plein air painters imbued their landscape paintings with the same spiritual sentiments as their French contemporaries, in an effort to show God's ubiquitous presence in nature. Painting in one of the most beautiful areas of the country, the Hudson River School painters captured the enthralling light dancing over the Catskills and Adirondacks in upstate New York and also espoused the importance of connecting with nature and recording their observations on-site. Cole, Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), and others then took those on-site studies and created grand studio paintings filled with such amazing light and lofty atmosphere that viewers were, and still are, instantly transported to a peaceful paradise.

In the Mountains by Albert Bierstadt, 1867, oil, 36 3/16 x 50¼. Collection Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.

From that first American plein air-painting school in the early 1800s to the California Impressionist movement in the early 1900s, and well into the later 20th century, numerous other landscape-painting groups were established around the United States, including the Lyme Art Colony, in Old Lyme, Connecticut; the Hoosier Impressionists of Brown County, Indiana; and the Boston Landscape School, in New England, among others. By passing down the ideals set forth by the original plein air painters, these artists created an enduring legacy for future generations of landscape painters. Today, many of those original art clubs and colonies are still flourishing, and, in fact, a great number of contemporary landscape painters seem to be encouraging a return to the social, artistic, and spiritual values upon which the plein air movement was founded.

Allison Malafronte is the associate editor of American Artist.

Comments

Great idea. Way to keep plein artists in touch. From my class at Pratt with Whitney, painting with Couch, Zornes, Fukuhara and others I have enjoyed outdoor painting. I subscribe to Amer Artist for many years (great editor) and this internet connection is the latest in good stuff. Thank you.