Plein Air Painting by Judith: Looking Down from Torrey Pines - Oil on Board

This painting was painted from Torrey Pines looking down from a hill top at the ocean. I love painting in this area.

A Brief History of Plein Air Painting

Painting the Landscape En Plein Air
En Plein Air is a French phrase meaning “in the open air” and it refers to creating art on location. In the 1800’s the artists known as Impressionists were the first ones to go outside of their studios to investigate the effects of sunlight on subjects.

• The roots of painting from life are found in 19th-century Europe. Englishman John Constable believed the artist should forget about formulas and trust his own vision in finding truth in nature. To find that truth, he made sketches outdoors, and then elaborated on them in the studio.
• Around the same time in France, in a small village outside Paris called Barbizon, a group of artists focused their attentions on peasant life and the natural world surrounding it. Like Constable, Francois Millet and Gustave Courbet challenged conventions of the day, choosing everyday subjects rather than the traditional cliches and presenting them in natural settings, the information for which came from sketches made in the field.
• Painting from life is a pursuit unlike any other painting technique. It challenges artists to concentrate every sensory nerve on the information in front them. They absorb it all, from sight to sound, from temperature to atmosphere, and then channel those feelings from head to hand, re-creating the vision in paints on paper or canvas.
• These realists, as they came to be called, laid the groundwork for the mid-19th century revolution in France that took painting from life to its logical conclusion. Lead by Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edouard Degas, Auguste Renoir, et. al. the impressionists espoused the belief that you should trust your eyes. Using newly developed theories of how the eye physically registers color, they maintained that what you saw in nature was not form, but rather light on form. And light could be conveyed by color. To prove their theories, they took their paint tubes and easels outdoors, where they re-created the world as colors which suggested light. Rebuffed at first for what appeared to be unfinished paintings, the impressionist vision soon became a standard for truthfully conveying the outdoor experience.
• Painting en plein air (in the open air) would forever change how we see the world. Artists in the United States were attracted to the concept, and many, like Californian Guy Rose, traveled to France to study with Monet. Suddenly, places with remarkable light were of particular interest to painters, including the both the East and West Coasts, and the American Southwest, where painting colonies formed. The goal of teachers and students alike was to capture the light and colors peculiar to the place.

Plein Air Painting by Judith

Monday, March 30, 2009

Looking Down from Torrey Pines - Oil on Board - 8" x 15"

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Plein Air Painting by Judith

Monday, March 30, 2009

Looking Down from Torrey Pines - Oil on Board - 8" x 15"

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Facebook Badge

Judith D'Agostino's Fan Box

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Twitter Updates

Welcome to my Blog

Judith D'Agostino

About Me

A Brief History of Plein Air Painting

Plein Air Painting Workshop with Judith in Tuscany

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Art Website and Blog Links

Search This Blog

Blog Archive