En Plein Air

The phrase en plein air is French meaning outdoors--literally something like "in the open (or full) air"--and is commonly used these days when talking about painting outdoors. Painting outside is much different than painting in a studio or indoors.The term is more than two hundred years old, coined by a French painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes who painted from nature and advocated what he called a "landscape portrait," a painting of the landscape done from within it and striving to capture the actual color, value and other attributes of the scene. A few decades into the 19th century painters of the Barbizon School who worked outside Paris near a village by that name. Painters like Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Jean-Francois Millet painted in the open air and worked hard to produce the landscape portrait. 

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, "Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Breau," oil, 1832 or 33

An excellent example is Mr. Corot's "Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Breau," (above) executed in about 1832. The trees are rendered in an exceptionally lifelike manner, their masses of foliage given shape and substance. For an outdoor painter, the work is as fresh and exhilarating as it was when new. As we do today, he often used these outdoor (en plein air) works to inform his larger and more ambitious studio works. 

Joaquin Sorolla, "Pescadora Valenciana," oil, 1916

Later artists with access to newer, brighter pigments painted en plein air in various European countries during the latter 19th century. The Macchiaioli in Italy, the Impressionists in France, among others became quite famous for their finished outdoor works, going beyond the sketchwork studies of their predecssors in the Barbizon movement to make ambitious works entirely on location. From their example, painters as diverse as Joaquin Sorolla and Winslow Homer also moved into the great outdoors. 

Winslow Homer, "Artists Sketching in the White Mountains," oil, 1868

 

Today painting en plein air (I still mostly just say "outdoors") continues with same commitment and work ethic. World over, people paint outside. A well-known advocate for outdoor painting has claimed a goal of a million plein air painters. My guess is we're already there, worldwide.