“Plein air” means “out-of-doors” in French. Painting “en plein air” can be traced to an engraving from about 1630 depicting a painter at work in the open air. Plein air painting was fully in bloom by 1800 in and around Rome. Corot was there twice in the 1820’s. In England, Constable was working outside doing completed paintings by about 1815. In 1842, Winsor Newton introduced the collapsible painting tube which made it much easier for painters to eschew the studio for the great outdoors. The French Impressionists took advantage of the new technology to capture fleeting scenes of nature.

Generally speaking, plein air paintings are completed out-of-doors. Traditionally, these “sketches” were not meant to be finished works, but were used by the artist as aids in producing larger, more finished works back in the studio. Today the term “plein air” generally means a painting completed outside or completed mostly out-of-doors and finished in the studio.