Plein air (from fr. En plein air - “in the open air”) is a term denoting the transfer in a picture of all the wealth of color changes due to exposure to sunlight and the surrounding atmosphere [1] . This term is also used to refer to the true reflection of the colorful richness of nature, all color changes in natural conditions, with the active role of light and air. Although, generally speaking, any technique can be used in the open air, painting in the open air has a number of features that are inherent in the open air and associated with a limited time to complete the work.
Content
Appearance
Plein air appeared at the beginning of the 19th century in England thanks to John Constable and Richard Parks Bonington . Plein-airism becomes the basis of the aesthetics of artists for whom light and air acquire independent significance and purely pictorial interest. The object itself is not consciously drawn, hardly expressed in concrete silhouettes, or completely disappears. This technique was very popular among the French impressionists (it was then that the open air as a term was widely used). Artists such as Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , Jean-Francois Millet , Camille Pissarro , Pierre-Auguste Renoir and not least Claude Monet contributed to the development of plein air painting. In Russia, in the 2nd half of the XIX - early XX centuries , Vasily Polenov , Isaac Levitan , Valentin Serov , Konstantin Korovin , Igor Grabar successfully engaged in open-air painting.
Painting in natural light was known for a long time and was used mainly for creating sketches. However, among the artists of the Barbizon school and the Impressionists, this painting technique received a new life.
Features of open-air painting
Impressionism, in general, is a prime example of the artist’s work in the open air. Famous art critic J.-L. Castagnari wrote:
“They [the Impressionists] perceive nature in such a way that it turns out to be anything but boring and banal. Their painting is full of life, swift, easy ... They do not strive for exact reproduction, but are limited to general perception ... They are impressionists in the sense that they reproduce not the landscape itself, but the impression caused by this landscape ... Thus, they depart from reality and completely move to the position of idealism. "
It was the impressionists who raised the etude, performed in the open air, to the level of full-fledged independent paintings. Impressionists tried to convey their own impressions of the world as accurately as possible - for the sake of this goal they abandoned the existing academic rules of painting and created their own, excellent method. Its essence was to convey with the help of separate strokes of pure paints the external impression of light, shadow, their reflection on the surface of objects. This method created the impression of a dissolution of the form in the surrounding light - air space. Claude Monet wrote about his work:
“My merit is that I wrote directly from nature, trying to convey my impressions of the most unstable and changing phenomena” [2] .
- A. G. Filippov
In modern times, training in open air often becomes one of the fundamental elements in teaching painting in various, artistic and educational institutions and is part of painting from nature.
Interesting Facts
- Thanks to the plein air, paints began to be produced in tubes . Prior to this, artists prepared paints in their workshops themselves.
- For the convenience of carrying the easel, artists began to invent more convenient and compact methods, so the first sketchbooks for painting began to appear .
Links
Notes
- ↑ “Popular Art Encyclopedia.” Ed. Field V.M .; M .: Publishing house "Soviet Encyclopedia", 1986.
- ↑ “Plein air as the basis of landscape painting” // Materials of the Regional Scientific and Practical Conference of Fine Art Teachers as part of the All-Russian Competition in Drawing and Painting “Master 2013” on April 23, 2013 “Preservation and development of academic art education in modern conditions”.
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