Plein Air Paintings: Capturing the Essence of Nature

Before this technological breakthrough, artists would venture outdoors to sketch or paint in watercolors, capturing the essence of a scene before returning to their studios to create larger, more detailed oil paintings. Watercolors were the primary medium for plein air studies, allowing artists like John Constable to explore nature’s subtleties in real time.

The invention of portable oil paints by John G. Rand in 1841 was a game-changer. For the first time, oil paints could be easily transported and used outside, allowing artists to work with the richness and flexibility of oils directly in nature. This shift not only facilitated the rise of the Barbizon School and later Impressionist painters, but also redefined the possibilities of capturing nature’s fleeting effects with immediacy and boldness.

The result is some intoxicating artwork that brings the beauty of the outside – from lakes and mountainscapes to verdant forests and meadows – to the canvas. Today, it is one of the most popular forms of painting. But at the start of the 1800s, it was a far less significant style of artwork. What changed was as much a technical revolution as an artistic one.

A Changing Landscape

In the early 1800s, artists worked almost exclusively in studios, as much out of necessity as choice. Creating paints from raw pigments was a difficult and time-consuming process, and the resulting materials—especially oil paints—were cumbersome and not easily transported. Watercolors, however, provided a more practical solution for painting outdoors, offering a portable medium that dried quickly, and thus allowed artists to capture the natural world in real time. This explains why early plein air studies, particularly landscapes, were often done in watercolor, while larger finished works in oil were completed back in the studio.

Though most paintings were still completed indoors, artists increasingly yearned to push the boundaries of traditional studio work. Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, credited with popularizing the term “plein air,” wrote in 1800 urging landscape artists to venture outdoors and paint directly on-site, capturing the true essence of nature with immediacy.

The idea gained further momentum with the Barbizon School, named after the French village near the Fontainebleau forest. Beginning around 1830, these artists, inspired by De Valenciennes’ ideas and British artists like John Constable, started painting outdoors to portray the authentic sights of nature. While many artists initially relied on watercolors for their outdoor studies, the advent of portable oil paints in the 1840s allowed them to use the richness of oils directly in nature, making it possible to paint alla prima, or “at first attempt,” with more permanence and vibrancy.

 

Oil Powers an Artistic Change

A couple of technical advances changed the reality of plein air painting among oil painters. In 1841, the American painter and inventor John G Rand patented the first collapsible paint tube. This meant that oil paint could be stored and transported without drying out. Alongside this came the development of the ‘box easel’ or ‘field easel’ in France, which were also collapsible, easily transportable and designed for outdoor painting. These developments, combined with portable canvases, sparked a wider interest in the plein air movement.

By the 1860s, the Barbizon School, led by the likes of Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, had grown in popularity and impact. Inspired by the Romantic landscape tradition, many of the artists sought to make nature itself the foremost character in each painting, evoking moods from wonder and joy to melancholy and pensive awe.

Yet the key element was to be guided by their own eyes and sensory instincts. Unlike more fantastical landscapes of the 17th Century, there was less inclination to fictionalize or embellish what they saw. In this fashion, the simple and the everyday could become as mesmerizing as the most exotic or imagined far-off land. Many artists began to visit the Barbizon School to paint the Fontainebleau forest, including Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. These artists, in turn, helped to develop the movement we now call Impressionism, with its rapidly applied brushstrokes and detailed attention to capturing how light could alter an outdoor scene.

Edward Willis Redfield – ”Drifted Road.”Sold for $237,500 USD via Shannon’s (October 2022).

Environmental Challenges

In depicting the great outdoors, plein air painters sometimes also have to battle against it. Changes in the weather, light, passing onlookers and other fluctuating conditions have to be taken into account. A fierce sunlight drying paint faster than expected can be just as much a challenge to an artist as a sudden rain shower. Yet the goal of the plein air painter is to capture the scene in one sitting with only, perhaps, minimal additions or finishing touches in the studio later.

This helps to give many finished plein air paintings their sense of spontaneity. The quick, soft brushstrokes evoking a sense of change and movement, flowing water, or the wind in the trees. Trying to capture the exact color is another challenge, but transportable oil paints meant that artists could thin, mix, or use paints directly from a tube outside in a way that was not possible before. In more recent times, acrylic paints and modern watercolor palettes have been used to expand the style of plein air paintings, all with the same aim: of portraying nature, from nature.

Key figures

Claude Monet

The founder of Impressionism and so-called father of plein air, the Paris-born master became fascinated by plein air painting as a means of portraying that which he most dearly wished to document: the beauty of the French countryside. As influential in his own lifetime as he has proved popular after it, Monet was intrigued by light, often painting similar scenes again and again to show how subtle changes in conditions could produce deftly different artwork – his 25 paintings of haystacks in Giverny from 1890-91, for example. Or, most famously, the water lilies in his back garden that were his focus for the last 20 years of his life, producing around 250 finished works. “My only merit lies in having painted directly before nature,” Monet wrote, “seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting effects.

Camille Pissarro

A friend and contemporary of Monet, the Danish-French Impressionist Camille Pissarro took to plein air painting in his 20s and never looked back. In particular, he captured rural landscapes, simple peasant life and life and village scenes, unadorned with false grandeur. His so-called “vulgar” choice of subject matter provoked critics, as did his vibrant use of color – “trees are not violet,” complained one objector – but Pissaro was merely ahead of his time. Even when a recurring eye infection cruelly prevented him from painting outside later in life, he adapted by working from hotel room windows around Europe, capturing – for example – the Boulevard Montmartre by day and by night.

John Constable

A plein air pioneer, the British artist born in 1776 predated Impressionism but his Romantic landscapes had a profound impact on the generation that followed him. Carrying paints in glass vials, John Constable attempted to capture the humble beauty of his Suffolk countryside, now widely referred to as “Constable Country” in tribute. Eschewing the prevailing trend for wild, exaggerated ruins and landscapes, Constable found wonder in the everyday. “The Hay Wain” – now one of Britain’s most beloved paintings – depicts a wagon crossing a river in front of a mill. Although Constable was forced to finish many paintings, including his acclaimed Six-Footers, in a studio, he was happiest surrounded by nature: the clouds, fields, cottages and farmhouses of his home.

Winslow Homer

Boston-born and largely self-taught, Winslow Homer began his career as an illustrator before developing into perhaps the finest American painter of the 19th Century. Employed by Harper’s Weekly magazine, Homer traveled to the front lines during the American Civil War to portray battle scenes and camp life. This experience, while fraught and dangerous, advanced his interest in creating art outdoors. Homer’s postwar work was marked by his vivid portrayals of American landscapes and – particularly – seascapes. He traveled to Paris in 1967 but was already painting en plein airby then. His “Artists Sketching in the White Mountains” actually depicts painters outdoors at work. As adept with watercolors and oils as he was with pencils, Homer was consistently drawn back to the sea, sailing out into the water to capture boats, sailors, fishing fleets, waves and storms.

Joaquín Sorolla

One of Spain’s most celebrated artists, Joaquín Sorolla was born in Valencia and – like so many other plein air masters – was forever drawn to the radiance of his home. The blazing sun and sunlit waters of the Mediterranean were his focus and, despite working on vast canvases to produce paintings that enveloped the viewer, he painted the majority of them outside. After traveling to Rome then Paris, Sorolla came back to Spain in 1888 and although he lived in Madrid, he returned to the coast to paint. He was fascinated by people as much as landscapes, however. Sorolla’s work portrayed bathers, children playing on a beach, fishermen and families. The warmth emanating from the canvas disguised a hazard of plein air painting in such a setting: sand often trapped in the dense layers of paint. “I could not paint at all if I had to paint slowly,” he once said. “Every effect is so transient, it must be rapidly painted.”

A World of Choice

The great gift of plein air painting can also be its curse: when the whole outside world is on offer, at what precise spot does an artist decide to stop and begin? In terms of settings and subjects, plein air paintings vary from rolling hills and valleys to cliff sides and harbors. Yet among that there are common themes: simplicity is often key, the effects of light on different scenes and, regularly, a fascination with water and the places where it meets the land.

Urban scenes are not uncommon, however. Renoir, like his contemporary Pissaro, happily captured Parisian streets, buildings and bustling life. When it comes to human subjects, many plein air painters have preferred to concentrate entirely on the natural world. People, if shown, are either passers-by – such as in Monet’s “The Poppy Field near Argenteuil” – or working men and women such as peasants, farmers, or fishermen.

Yet even that is not a hard and fast rule. John Singer Sargent for example, the acclaimed American portrait artist, would paint plein air but arrange his subjects as he wanted them. And – breaking another unwritten plein air rule – he would craft his works in multiple sittings: waiting until the light was in the perfect spot, painting quickly for around 25 minutes, then putting his canvas away and returning to it the next day at the exact same time so that he could continue in near-identical conditions.

A Wide-Ranging Legacy

The legacy of the plein air movement has never been more apparent than today. While there was a dip in overall popularity after the initial wave in the mid-to-late 1800s, it came back into style as the 20th Century went on; from Neil Welliver capturing Maine’s deep woodlands to David Hockney’s portrayals of Southern California or his native Yorkshire.

Helped by ever lighter and more portable paints, easels, brushes and equipment, plein air painting is something we now see as part of everyday life. As popular among artists as it is collectors, today it is a common sight to see a group of artists outdoors, busying themselves while the light lasts.

Once considered a curious and even crude affectation plein air has, over time, won its competition with the exaggerated grandiosity once associated with landscape painting. Whatever the style employed, capturing the realism and authenticity of a fleeting moment is generally considered the high bar when portraying the natural world. This is the influence of the first plein air movement, as strongly felt now as ever.