Plein Air:
How Artists Painted Outdoors and How to Repeat This Experience Today

Plein air (French: en plein air) is a creative method of painting outdoors directly from nature. This approach is characterized by its complete dependence on the constantly changing light and air environment, forcing the artist to work quickly and precisely to capture the fleeting states of nature. For this reason, plein air practice remains a mandatory part of the curriculum in most art schools.

Today, plein air painting is experiencing a new surge, taking the form of multi-day creative expeditions. Successful fieldwork requires a well-designed campsite that can protect from inclement weather and provide storage for unfinished works. A large inflatable tent is an excellent solution for this purpose ; it can be quickly deployed and provides enough interior space to wait out the rain without damaging the wet canvases.

History of plein air painting

For several centuries, European painting existed exclusively in the studio. The academic tradition, established in the 16th and 17th centuries, dictated that artists work in studios and pavilions specially equipped with diffused and soft overhead lighting. Nature was reproduced from memory, sketches, or other works — live contact with nature was not considered necessary.

The first breakthrough occurred in England at the beginning of the 19th century. Plein air painting emerged thanks to the work of painters John Constable and Richard Parkes Bonington, who began taking their canvases directly to fields and coastlines. Their example quickly found a response in France.

In the 1830s and 1840s, a group of artists emerged around the village of Barbizon near the Forest of Fontainebleau, known as the Barbizon School. The first to settle in Barbizon in 1836 was Théodore Rousseau, the founder and inspiration of the school, who had first come to the Forest of Fontainebleau to paint sketches in 1828–1829. The school’s most famous representatives were Camille Corot and Théodore Rousseau. The Barbizon artists developed an outstanding naturalism, meticulously studying the natural environment, and rejected many of the canons of academic art in their quest to create a new realistic style of painting. However, the Barbizon artists were still only taking their first steps: they "followed the motif," creating sketches en plein air, but completed their paintings in the studio.

A modest but revolutionary invention provided the decisive technical impetus. In 1841, American artist John Hoff Rand invented tin paint tubes. With the advent of oil paints in tubes and the portable easel-suitcase on legs in the mid-19th century, the popularity of outdoor painting skyrocketed. Now, artists no longer had to lug around glass jars of pigments — the entire palette fit in a small box.

The heyday of plein air painting came with Impressionism. At the first Impressionist exhibition, held at Nadar’s studio in 1874, Monet presented the painting "Impression. Sunrise." Upon seeing the painting, critic Louis Leroy used the title in his ironic review — from then on, the term "Impressionism" became synonymous with the entire movement.

Working en plein air became a fundamental part of Monet’s artistic practice: observing nature, he concluded that there are no constant local tones and that the color of any object is variable and dependent on lighting. This observation gave rise to his famous series — "Haystacks," "Rouen Cathedral," and "Water Lilies" — in which the same motif is painted dozens of times in different light and at different times of year. Along with Monet, Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir made significant contributions to the development of plein air painting.

The historical significance of the Barbizon painters lies in the fact that they paved the way for Impressionism, a movement that forever changed painting’s relationship to light, air, and the moment.

Russian artists in nature

While the French Impressionists were exploring the banks of the Seine and the Normandy coast, Russia was developing its own movement, one that brought painting out of the academic halls and into the open spaces of the country. Its driving force was the Society of Traveling Art Exhibitions, an association founded in 1870 in protest against the institutionalized aesthetics of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.

The movement’s members, including Ilya Repin and Isaac Levitan, sought to depict scenes from folk life, traveling extensively throughout the country and painting en plein air. At various times, the group included Alexei Savrasov, Ivan Shishkin, Vasily Polenov, Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov, and many others, who later became renowned artists.

Ivan Shishkin occupies a special place among them — a man for whom exploring nature was not a creative method, but a way of life. "The forest hero-artist," "the king of the forest" — those were the nicknames Ivan Shishkin was given by his contemporaries. Shishkin knew Russian nature with a scholarly understanding and loved it with all the strength of his powerful nature. From this knowledge and this love emerged images that became unique symbols of Russia. By the end of his life, he had accumulated approximately 300 plein-air sketches and over 200 drawings, all painted directly from nature — in the forests near Yelabuga, on the islands of Valaam, and in the environs of St. Petersburg.

Isaac Levitan built his relationship with nature in a completely different way. Where Shishkin worked with the precision of a naturalist, Levitan sought mood. He became the creator of the "mood landscape" — a painting possessing unprecedented psychological richness and expressing the life of the human soul, which gazes upon nature as the center of the ineffable mysteries of existence. This required extensive travel: in 1887, Levitan left for the Volga, where he spent several years until 1890. It was from there that he brought back a series of Volga landscapes — "Evening on the Volga," "Evening. Golden Plyos," and "After the Rain. Plyos" — works that forever changed the perception of the Russian landscape. From everywhere — from the Volga, Finland, and Italy — Levitan brought back new paintings of local landscapes.

Konstantin Korovin went even further, directly absorbing the lessons of French Impressionism. He was one of the first Russian artists to paint en plein air with broad, free brushstrokes, striving to capture not the form of an object, but its sensation. The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is filled with a fresh air — summer, autumn, winter — that wafts from the canvases of Levitan, Korovin, and Serov.

The Peredvizhniki did for Russian painting what the Barbizon and Impressionists did for French painting: they opened up the space of the painting, letting in real air, real light, and a real country — boundless, diverse, and inexhaustible in its motifs.

How the masters worked

Plein air painting has always demanded not only talent, but also extreme concentration, endurance, and even ingenuity. Working in conditions where the sun moves inexorably across the sky and clouds constantly change the landscape’s coloring, forced great masters to develop their own unique techniques and adhere to strict rules.

Camille Corot, one of the forerunners of Impressionism, was willing to sacrifice sleep for the sake of capturing the cherished state of nature. He would set out for his paintings at 3 or 4 a.m., when the pre-dawn twilight was barely lifting. The artist treasured this fleeting moment for its soft, silvery light and the subtle gradations of gray and green, which faded as soon as the sun rose above the horizon.

Claude Monet approached the variability of light as a scientific phenomenon. To capture the "instantaneity" of perception, he took several canvases with him into nature. He worked in series: positioning himself before the same motif — whether Rouen Cathedral or haystacks — he changed stretchers every half hour or hour, as the light shifted. If the sun hid behind a cloud, he put one canvas aside and picked up another, capturing precisely that overcast day.

Vincent van Gogh, working in the south of France under the scorching sun of Arles, transformed plein air painting into a veritable battle against time. Rapidly shifting shadows and the desire to capture fleeting moments gave rise to his famous brushwork — quick, expressive, impasto brushstrokes applied directly from the tube to the canvas. The artist worked to the brink of physical exhaustion, but it was precisely this frantic speed that allowed him to convey the very inner dynamism and pulsation of living nature.

Plein air painting rules from the masters:

• Capture the moment, not the details : don’t try to paint every leaf — capture the overall tone and color of the environment.
• Manage your time : divide your work into short sessions (no more than 1.5 – 2 hours) until the shadow pattern changes dramatically.
• Study reflexes : Remember that outdoors the sky illuminates all horizontal surfaces, while the ground and grass provide colored reflections on vertical surfaces.
• Take care of your eyesight : never paint in a way that direct sunlight hits your canvas or palette — it blinds you and distorts your color perception.

How to repeat this experience today

For a beginner, painting en plein air is always a challenge and a step outside of your comfort zone. In a studio or at home, everything is at hand: the light is stable, water is nearby, and the canvas isn’t about to blow away in a gust of wind. However, the direct experience of nature is invaluable. To avoid disappointment on your first outing, it’s important to prepare properly.

First, it’s important to decide on a technique. Beginners are often recommended to use watercolor or graphic art (pastels, pencils) — these are lightweight materials that don’t take long to dry and easily fit in a backpack. However, if you want to experience true density and richness of color, choose oil or acrylic. Oil dries slowly, allowing you to easily correct mistakes, while acrylic, on the other hand, hardens in minutes, requiring rapid work.

The main rule of composition in plein air is the ability to eliminate unnecessary details. Nature overwhelms with its abundance of detail. Use a simple life hack: make a "viewfinder" out of cardboard (a small frame) and look through it at the landscape to find the perfect angle. When starting to paint, forget about small branches or house windows — cover the canvas with large splashes of color and tone (the sky, the ground, the forest floor).

Minimum set for a one-day plein air painting:

1. A portable tripod easel or painter’s box (adjusted to your height).
2. Painting base (primed cardboard, canvas on cardboard or a tablet with paper).
3. Paints (a basic set of 7-10 colors, necessarily with a double supply of white).
4. Brushes of different sizes (preferably synthetic or bristle) and a palette knife.
5. Solvent/water in a sealed container and a jar for it.
6. A special umbrella for plein air painting (attached to the easel to protect the canvas from the sun).
7. Rags or wet wipes for wiping hands and arms (lots of them!).
8. A warm layer of clothing (it’s always colder outdoors than it feels when you’re standing still) and a hat.
9. A thermos of hot tea and a quick snack.

Multi-day plein air

When day-long excursions to the city park no longer satisfy their creative ambitions, artists decide to embark on expeditions. A multi-day plein air painting session offers the opportunity to escape to truly wild, picturesque places: the coast of the Barents Sea, the mountain gorges of Altai, or the deep forests of Karelia. Here, nature reveals itself in a completely different way, allowing one to paint at dawn and dusk, without worrying about rushing or the return journey.

The transition from a short walk to a full-fledged expedition requires a radical shift in logistics. The primary task becomes not just collecting artistic materials, but organizing one’s daily life. An artist on a multi-day plein air painting assignment spends 8-10 hours on their feet, and without the opportunity to properly rest, warm up, and sleep, creativity quickly becomes a matter of survival.

Particular attention must be paid to protecting finished works. Humid forest air, dew, or sudden downpours can irreparably damage oil sketches that haven’t yet dried. Therefore, the artist’s camp must be as secure and functional as possible.

What you need for an artist camp:

• A reliable and quickly erectable shelter : every minute of good light is precious on an expedition. Instead of spending an hour assembling a traditional tent made of stuffy poles, professionals use spacious inflatable tents that can be set up in just a few minutes with a pump. A huge advantage of these tents is their impressive interior space and high ceiling. Inside, you can easily set up not only sleeping quarters but also a field workshop: arrange stretchers, lay out tools, and dry fresh sketches, protecting them from rain, wind, and dust.
• Autonomous lighting : powerful camping lanterns and power banks. They’re essential not only for everyday use, but also for evening sketches in a notebook or for sorting out a palette after sunset.
• Equipment storage system : dry bags for clean paper and canvases, as well as special cassette boxes with slots for the safe transportation of wet paintings.
• A well-thought-out camp kitchen : a gas burner, a windbreak, and a supply of high-calorie food for a quick recovery.

In an era when any landscape can be instantly captured on a smartphone camera, and generative neural networks can produce flawlessly composed digital images in the style of Impressionism in seconds, plein air painting seems a surprising anachronism. Why stand for hours in the wind with a heavy sketchbook, swatting away insects and battling the blinding sun?

The answer lies in the very essence of this method. Plein air painting is more than just a way to replicate reality; it’s a profound therapeutic process and a way to slow down in the frantic flow of the modern world. Alone with nature, the artist experiences a unique co-creation experience. They absorb the scents of grass, the sound of the wind, the cries of birds, and the warmth of the sun’s rays — and all this emotional content is transferred to the canvas through the movement of the brush. Painting outdoors teaches us not just to look, but to truly see the world, noticing the subtlest changes in the states around us and within ourselves.

No photograph or artificial intelligence can convey the living, pulsating human impression born here and now at the tip of a brush. Plein air is alive and will continue to be so long as humanity requires a sincere, sensual dialogue with the world around us.

Don’t be afraid to step outside your four walls. Grab a notebook, a pencil, or a box of paints, head to the nearest park, or go on a full-blown trip — and try to capture your own unique moment.