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Every
successful artist must possess the courage to meet artistic
challenges as well as the ingenuity and determination
necessary to carry a work of art to completion. These traits
are never more evident than with artists who set up their
easels outdoors and paint their landscape pictures right
there on the spot. The term plein-air (French for
“open air”) refers to paintings that are done on site. The
purposes of such paintings, in part, are to reproduce
accurately the various effects of daylight. Plein-air
painters seek to capture the exact look of outdoor nature;
this “look,” of course, always reveals the inner “eye” of
every artist as well. We all can see the same scene in
different ways; this is what makes each artist’s work
unique. Given the individuality of each artist’s view,
however, all plein-air paintings should exhibit the
following: the sunlight should really look sunny, the
shadows should really look shadowy, and the grass, trees,
and buildings should be colored as if the light of day were
actually falling on them. Details like individual leaves and
blades of grass assume less importance in plein-air
works. Emphasis is placed instead upon reproducing the
sensations that direct or indirect sunlight, glare, heat or
cold, wetness or dryness produce in our vision as we survey
the land. Our exploration, here, of plein-air
painting will examine the development of the plein-air
movement in landscape painting from its beginnings in the
1830’s to its present place in contemporary art.
Until the
Renaissance landscape was mostly shown as a background to
depictions of human activity. The great German Renaissance
master Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) made a number of town
scenes, for example, in watercolor on his first trip to
Italy in 1495. Most experts agree, however, that the father
of landscape painting as we know it was Cluade Lorrain
(1600-1682), a Frenchman whose career was spent in Rome and
whose large-scale scenes of mountain vistas, classical ruins
and harbors were extremely influential throughout Europe. In
England John Constable (1776-1837) and Joseph M. W. Turner
(1775-1851) were landscape specialists and became two of
their nation’s best known artists. Their fame, in fact,
helped to popularize landscape as subject matter because of
the many painters who followed their example. These and
other pre-1830’s artists differed from what would later be
known as plein-air painters primarily in their manner
of painting pictures entirely in their studios guided only
by slight sketches, memory and learned conventions of form,
style and proportion. What resulted was often a good
substitute for what we see in nature but rarely were
these paintings a good reflection of what we see.
It was in
France
where the tradition of artists who went to live in the
country to paint the landscape first hand was “officially”
begun. The small village of Barbizon in the forest of
Fontainebleau became home to a band of artists who were
known collectively as the
Barbizon school. This group, Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867)
and Charles Daubigny (1817-1878) being most prominent among
them, chose to convey the beauty of the land by working only
outdoors. Along with the
Pre-Raphaelite School artists in England, these were among
the first painters to systematically work plein-air.
But, apparently because color formulas were so deeply set in
their minds and despite the artists’ dedicated observations
from nature, the sunlight and overcast effects they aimed
for were only partially successful; the light areas of their
paintings are too yellowish and the shadow areas are too
brownish to give a truly natural effect.
From the
1830’s onward artists in France (and others in Germany,
Britain, America and Scandinavia) led the way in adopting a
more naturalistic and scientific way of viewing their
surroundings. They sought new ways of measuring and grading
the effects that light produced on various places, objects,
animals and people. In addition, the whole gamut of painting
techniques known up until that period was also carefully
re-examined. The results were compared to nature and still
found wanting.
Ultimately, there were four major developments that helped
advance the plein-air movement. The first was
technical: Plein-air landscape painting received a
tremendous boost during the 1840’s with the invention of
lightweight, portable sketch box easels and collapsible
metal paint tubes. Artists, previously, were required to
grind and prepare their oil paints outdoors or else carry
piles of different colors wrapped in small pieces of animal
bladder, the latter of which usually leaked and were not
impermeable, causing the paints to harden before they could
be used effectively. Artists also had to use the sort of
tripod easels which were really only suitable for indoor
work. Add to this the storage boxes and grinding tools, and
one can easily grasp how seemingly inaccessible the world of
outdoor painting was in earlier times. The cause of plein-air
painting was further aided by the introduction of stronger,
more brilliant colors (particularly cobalt blue, cadmium
yellow and cadmium red) which permitted a more accurate
rendering of hues transcribed from nature.
Second
was the development of specialized instruction in landscape
painting in the major European art academies during the
first half of the nineteenth century. The
Dusseldorf
Academy
in Germany became the leader in landscape instruction by
hiring some of the best landscape specialists as professors;
many of the school’s students went on to achieve great
success. The American Hudson River School artists Albert
Bierstadt (1830-1902), Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910)
and William Trost Richards (1833-1905) were among those who
received their training at the Dusseldorf Academy. The
school required that its pupils paint outdoors as much as
possible, and scholarships were awarded for painting trips
to various regions in
Europe (often
Italy)
during which time students were expected to paint plein-air
studies of the new scenery.
In the
painting “Berghang,” by Dusseldorf student Ludwig Becker
(German, 1833-1868), the high vantage point gave the artist
a chance to contrast the sun’s bright glint on the roof
tiles with the complex masses of long shadows caused by the
raking light, contrasts that create sensations by directly
stimulating the eye. As visual stimuli they represent the
widest range possible in a painting—the brightest glare to
the deepest shadow. That an artist was able to achieve this
kind of effect as early as 1865 is a testament not only to
the increased accessibility of outdoor painting at this time
but also to the quality of the instruction available.
The third
advance was due to the influence of the figure painter Jules
Bastien-Lepage (French, 1848-1884) whose greatest work,
“Joan of Arc,” of 1879, is well-known to visitors of the
Metropolitan
Museum in New York. The large-scale paintings Bastien-Lepage
created of peasant life were exhibited in Paris and London
from 1874 to 1884 and garnered enormous praise from artists,
critics and the public. His importance in the development of
plein-air painting was due to the fact that he was
one of the first to successfully paint life-sized figure
subjects entirely in the open air. In his paintings he
succeeded to a greater extent than anyone before him in
combining naturalistic detail, narrative content, strong
draftmanship, and convincing effects of light into unified,
solidly realistic images. Visitors of the Paris Salon
exhibitions, who were accustomed to seeing pictures of the
outdoors rendered with brownish shadows and stylized forms,
found themselves enchanted by the vigorous handling of
realistic form and lifelike coloration they found in works
such as “Joan of Arc.” And when other painters saw
Bastien-Lepage’s pictures and discovered he had simply set
up his easel outdoors, posed his models, and painted right
there through to the finish, they sought to do likewise with
an unprecedented fervor. All this activity resulted in a
fresher, more vivid concept of outdoor color and by the year
1880 the plein-air movement was in full swing.
The
fourth development in advancing plein-air methods
came through the widespread growth of artist colonies. As
was realized in Barbizon, there were many benefits
associated with an artist’s living and working among other
painters who held similar ideals. Solutions to painting
problems could be solved by one or several artists and then
shared with the entire group. The mutual knowledge and
support thus gained by all proved valuable, especially to
younger painters.
It was
already clear by the 1870’s that Bastien-Lepage’s plein-air
naturalism had set a new direction for both figure and
landscape painting. Eager to test their abilities artists
travelled to rural communities in
France
or established groups in their own native countries to set
up outdoors and work on their compositions. The resulting
works were more realistic than the paintings of the
Impressionists yet freer in execution than those of the
older Hudson River School. The English painter Stanhope
Forbes (1857-1947) wrote of the plein-air movement as
representing “one of those distinct waves of feeling which
occur occasionally in Art, as in Literature, and the tide
had set in strongly in favor of out-of-door work, and a very
thorough study of all its changing effects. It was a breath
of fresh air in the tired atmosphere of the studios, and
painters began to see that it needed more than an occasional
visit to the country to get at the heart of its mysteries:
that he who wished to solve them must live among the scenes
he sought to render, and become thoroughly familiarized with
every aspect of nature. Under the spell of the genius Jean
François Millet and ... Bastien-Lepage, most of us young
students were turning our backs on the great cities,
forsaking the studios with their unvarying north light to
set up our easels in country districts where we could pose
our models and attack our work in sunshine or in shadow
under the open sky.”1 The ideals expressed here by
Forbes are repeated in scores of existing letters, articles
and memoirs written by artists of the period. Plein-air
painting had come into its own—to stay.
Predictably, artist colonies cropped up during the summer
months when the art academies were closed. Painters began to
flock to Concarneau in France, Pont-Aven in Brittany, St.
Ives and Newlyn in
Cornwall,
England
and Dachau, near Munich, Germany in order to work up
paintings for the various international exhibitions held
during the fall and winter. In Brittany, for instance, it
was common for an artist to work all summer on one painting
for the Paris Salon. Some painters worked so long outdoors
on large pictures that the seasons changed well before the
paintings were finished. One American artist described a
colleague’s ordeal as follows: “Clifford Grayson has been
painting a picture of a peasant girl seated on a
wheelbarrow. He began it in the spring with a delicate
background of light green leaves and blossoms. He enriched
the greens during the middle of the summer and removed the
blossoms, the blossoms having fallen off. In September the
leaves began to turn, and now, October 11, there is a russet
background. I don’t know but... I like it better than any of
the others.”2
The
landscapes of the American artists Hugh Bolton Jones
(1848-1927) and Willard Metcalf (1858-1925) represented a
similar but quicker approach. Even so, the prospect of
spending one or two months fixed to the spot while working
on one picture led many avid plein-air artists to
modify their methods. For large paintings the old system of
painting indoors from studies made outdoors was radically
updated. Now that artists knew what to look for in open-air
color and light there was no reason why they couldn’t
achieve the same results working indoors when the size of
the picture made outdoor painting cumbersome. As long as the
eye of the artist is constantly refreshed and informed by
outdoor work this will hold true.
Contemporary landscape painters usually do both; some work
is done entirely on site with other work done in the studio.
Plein-air
painting enjoys an exciting resurgence today. As a working
method and as a way of seeing, it continues to attract
artist converts while retaining its popularity with
collectors. In this age of photography it becomes ever more
valuable for the artist to experience nature at first
hand rather than copy a 35mm slide of it, a device many
artist do try. This is the issue that most sharply defines
the wide gulf existing between true plein-air
painting and that which is photo-derived. Although both
approaches are valid, it is increasingly important in this
technological age to remember that we are human and need to
seek nourishment from things personal, heartfelt, and
handmade. Once we acknowledge these basic truths we can
better appreciate the plein-air painter whose hand,
eye, heart and mind have permanently captured a moment of
outdoor beauty for us to enjoy.
1. Caroline Fox and Francis Greenacre,
Artists of the Newlyn School, 1979 pp. 15-16.
2. David Sellin, Americans in Brittany and Normandy,
1860-1910, 1982, p. 48.
Anthony Watkin’s paintings have been featured
in galleries and exhibitions in New York City, Washington D.
C., Baltimore, San Antonio and Atlanta, among other cities.
His work has appeared in such publications as
The
Artists’ Magazine and The Washington Post.
Awards include the
Florence
Lonsford Award for Landscape, Salmagundi Club, and the
Fredrix Award for Best Landscape, Oil Painters of America.
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