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- Painting en plein air allowed artists to capture the emotional and sensory dimensions of a particular landscape at a particular moment in time. It thus expressed a new spirit of spontaneity and truth to personal impulse within art.
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En plein air (pronounced [ɑ̃ plɛ.n‿ɛʁ]; French for 'outdoors'), or plein-air [1] painting, is the act of painting outdoors. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look.
Oct 20, 2023 · The art of painting “en plein air” means to paint “in the open” (or outdoors) and has become synonymous with the French impressionist painters like Monet. This style could also be seen as painting “in the moment” because it requires some quick decisions and mark-making.
- Summary of en Plein Air
- Key Ideas & Accomplishments
- Beginnings
- Concepts and Styles
- Later Developments
En plein air, a French phrase meaning "in the open air," describes the process of painting a landscape outdoors, though the phrase has also been applied to the resulting works. The term defines both a simple technical approach and a whole artistic credo: of truth to sensory reality, a refusal to mythologize or fictionalize landscape, and a commitme...
Painting en plein air allowed artists to capture the emotional and sensory dimensions of a particular landscape at a particular moment in time. It thus expressed a new spirit of spontaneity and tru...Painting en plein air became particularly associated with the Impressionist movement, although it had been pioneered by earlier generations of artists, from English Romantic painters such as John C...Considered as an ethos rather than a technique, plein air painting casts a huge shadow over modern art as a whole, because it signified the honest, unadorned depiction of reality, and was thus ofte...The rise of painting en plein airacross the nineteenth century was coextensive with the rise of landscape painting as a legitimate artistic genre. In the early nineteenth century, landscapes were o...Sketching Outdoors in Italy
Although the first recorded use of the term "en plein air" was in 1891, painting outdoors evolved from the historical practice of sketching in the open air, which dated back to the Renaissance. As the art historian Paula Rea Radisich notes, "...artists have sketched outdoors from time immemorial," though the sketches were generally viewed as studies or preparatory work, for paintings created later in workshops or studios, rather than as autonomous works. An early example is Leonardo da Vinci'...
Diego Velázquez in Spain
Diego Velázquez created what are thought to be the known first oil sketches in 1630, with his Villa Medici in Rome, Two Men at the Entrance of a Cave (c. 1630) and his View of the Gardens of the Villa Medici, Rome, with a Statue of Ariadne(c. 1630). These small works were also innovative in depicting landscape realistically, without including a classical motif. As the art critic Javier Portús writes, "in the 17th century...the representation of nature on canvas was very rarely enough by itsel...
Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes in France
By the early 1800s, the practice and theory of Pierre Henri de Valenciennes had established oil sketching throughout Europe as an essential component of landscape painting. Living in Rome for several years, where he was influenced by Claude Lorrain, Valenciennes often worked outdoors. As he put it, "oil sketches must be done quickly, in no more than two hours. The artist must be minutely attentive to light and atmospheric conditions and be ready to lay aside one sketch and take up another as...
The Rise of Landscape Painting
The rise of en plein air technique reflected the elevation of landscape painting to a high art across the nineteenth century. As art historian Laura Auricchio writes, "between 1800 and 1900, French landscape painting underwent a remarkable transformation from a minor genre rooted in classical traditions to a primary vehicle for artistic experimentation." In the early 1800s, Pierre Henri de Valenciennes established the French Academy's new Prix de Rome for "historical landscape." But many en p...
The Influence of Technology
En plein air painting was enabled by various technological advances. Until the 1800s, artists had to grind their own pigments and mix them with various binding oils to be used for the work at hand, thus confining painting to the studio. In 1841 the invention of the paint tube by the artist John Goffe Rand transformed artistic practice. Tube paints could be easily transported, then spontaneously thinned, mixed, or used directly from the tube. By the 1850s the field easel or French box easel ha...
Engagement with Reality
Rejecting the Academy practice of imitating classical themes and the works of the Old Masters, plein airpainters emphasized the artist's direct engagement with nature. Adapting to the conditions of the moment, the artist sought a direct sensory and emotional connection to the scene they were representing, informed by observation of specific details. Working in nature was a rigorous process, altering the dimensions of artistic creation as an experiential process. As Vincent van Gogh wrote, "ju...
The legacy of en plein air painting lay primarily in its influence on modern art, as it represented a rejection of Academic conventions and an embrace of artistic creation outside the studio which strongly informed modernism's radical agenda. At the same time, Cézanne's en plein air work inspired a new generation of artists, including Pablo Picasso...
plein-air painting, in its strictest sense, the practice of painting landscape pictures out-of-doors; more loosely, the achievement of an intense impression of the open air (French: plein air) in a landscape painting.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Dec 28, 2022 · En plein air is a French phrase meaning “in the open air.”. During the late 1800s, circa 1860-1890, en plein air painting became increasingly popular among renowned and amateur painters alike. It all started in 1841, when an American artist started putting his paints in metal tubes.
Their desire to paint light and its changing, ephemeral qualities, coupled with the creation of transportable paint tubes and the box easel—the precursor to the plein air easels of today—allowed artists the freedom to paint “en plein air,” which is the French expression for “in the open air.”
Feb 25, 2021 · A Brief History of Plein Air Painting: What Is Plein Air Painting? Painting outdoors has a long history in the art world, but it was not until the early 19th century that it became widely practiced. Before this shift, many artists mixed their own paints using raw pigments.
