07/18/2021
Blue Ridge Plein Air Painters:
“Different Perspectives”
(A brief history of how Plein Air Painting came to be, and what our group is all about!)
There is a special friendship shared by the members of the Blue Ridge Plein Air Painters. A friendship centered around their mutual love of painting directly from life the beauty of God’s creation; a friendship where each artist affirms positive personal and professional growth from the association and interaction with others in the group.
Blue Ridge Plein Air Painters is a fellowship of six oil painters, individuals from diverse backgrounds, who share a common love of painting outdoors – the joy of painting en plein air, directly from nature. These artists, however, each approach the painting process from his or her own unique perspective and their works reflect the beauty and grandeur of nature as seen through different eyes, as seen from Different Perspectives. And, while there may be differences in style, technique, and vision, the artists assert that they enjoy a definite synergism from painting together out-of-doors, learning from each other and growing through the fellowship, friendship, and camaraderie of the group.
Plein-air painting derives its name from the French expression en plein air, which means “in the open air” and is now particularly used to describe the act of painting out-of-doors, of painting directly from life. When the term plein-air is used today, many think primarily of the French Impressionist movement of the 1870s and 1880s, with its emphasis on the effects of outdoor light and color. Certainly French Impressionism has influenced American plein-air painters, but the origins of American painting from life are found much earlier in the 19th century. American plein-air painting has its roots in the outdoor sketching practices of the European Romantic landscape painters; these artists, in searching for truth in nature, as exemplified by the English painter John Constable, began routinely producing oil sketches out-of-doors in the first decade of the 19th century. Following this convention, Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848), America’s first major landscape painter, prepared small oil studies for his larger studio paintings and sometimes sketched in oil out-of-doors.
Cole’s friend Asher Brown Durand (1796 – 1886) was probably the first American artist to produce finished plein-air paintings. Starting in the early 1830s, Durand painted oil sketches directly from nature, and by the early 1840s was returning from sketching trips with fully finished small paintings, finished works done out-of-doors. Sketching in oil outdoors became a normal practice for most landscape artists; and, by 1850, oil sketches began to be regarded as independent works of art in their own right. Plein-air painting, reaching what some consider its apex with the French Impressionists, had by the beginning of the 20th century become a distinct and important part of American and European art.
Today, painting contemporary plein-air works, in styles ranging from Romantic Realism to modern Impressionism, the Blue Ridge Plein Air Painters continue the historic tradition of
painting outdoors, of painting from life. Like the artists before them, they paint oil sketches from nature intended only as studies for easel paintings to be done later in the studio, smaller paintings that are field sketches finished in the studio, “true” plein-air works completed entirely (or nearly so) out-of-doors, and paintings done entirely in the studio – easel works that might be based upon field sketches, photographs, oil studies, or perhaps just the imagination of the artist.
Individually, members of the Blue Ridge Plein Air Painters travel widely, painting, sketching, and photographing many subjects, but they always look forward to returning home and painting with the group in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
