Plein Air Painting
Techniques. Resources. Creative Processes. Genres.
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Plein Air Painting
Most part of the history of painting has developed between four walls, in studies. But at a certain time, artists had the idea of painting outdoors in order to capture the effects of light and the atmosphere surrounding things, and thus portray nature in a realistic manner.
Painting outdoors was a milestone in history and it was both important and “scandalous” at the same time. Painting outdoors meant rejecting the conventional and ideal patterns of beauty —we may say, an artificial beauty— taught in the academies.
In order to seek the “direct experience” with the world, the artist was no longer “enclosed” in his studio —something quite symbolic—.
As artists had these new inclinations, at first they drew sketches from life and then captured them on canvas in their studios. Later, it became necessary to paint directly “under the sky” using portable easels.
At the same time, there was a crucial technical issue: in the second half of the 19th century, oil paints became more easily transportable, since they began to be sold in tubes and the artist did not have to prepare the colors one by one. (Renoir is credited with the phrase “without color in tubes, there would be no Impressionism.”)
Although there were some artists who in previous centuries had studied nature in the open air, this “revolution” took place in the 19th century with Constable and Turner in England, with the Barbizon School, and later with the Impressionists in France (in the chosen picture we see Monet painting in the open air portrayed by Renoir) or with the Macchiaioli in Italy.
At the time, it was a disturbing concept that art left Beauty behind in its pursuit of Truth. (The first stage was the search for discovering “how reality is,” followed by “how it is perceived,” and finally “how it is felt.
Image: Monet Painting in His Garden of Argenteuil (1873). Renoir.
Recommended links:
The direct experience and its importance for modern art.
Fundamental Painters of the Barbizon School.
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