What Is Painting Outdoors? A Practice That Changed What Paintings Looked Like
By the BrainSnail editorial team. How these articles are written and checked, and how to tell us when one is wrong.
Painting a finished work outside in front of the subject, rather than sketching there and finishing in a studio, became possible in the nineteenth century because of changes in materials. What resulted was a different kind of picture.
What changed to allow it
Working outdoors was constrained by materials rather than by inclination. Paint had to be ground and mixed by the artist or by an assistant and stored in animal bladders, which leaked, dried and made transport awkward, so working away from a studio meant limited colours and constant waste. The introduction of the collapsible metal tube in the 1840s solved that, providing sealed portable paint that kept indefinitely and that could be bought ready-mixed in a wide range of colours. Portable easels, prepared canvas boards and a reliable supply of manufactured pigments completed the arrangement. The new synthetic pigments produced by the chemical industry supplied intense colours that had been expensive or unavailable, which had an effect on palettes that is visible in the paintings. None of this dictated a style, and all of it made a particular approach practical for the first time.
What working outside imposes
The conditions shape the painting in consistent ways:
- •Speed, since light changes within an hour or two and the subject will not wait
- •Simplification, since a fast painting cannot carry detail and must resolve the subject into larger shapes
- •Visible brushwork, since there is no time to blend and smooth a surface
- •Higher key colour, since daylight is far brighter than studio light and colours mixed outdoors look dull indoors
- •Attention to atmosphere, since what changes fastest is light and weather rather than form
- •Physical practicality, since wind, insects, rain and onlookers are all part of the exercise
What it changed in painting
The practice is closely associated with the Impressionists and predates them substantially, with earlier painters making oil studies outdoors as preparation for studio works, and the shift was in treating the outdoor painting as the finished work rather than as a study. That shift carried consequences. Subject matter moved towards ordinary landscape and weather rather than composed classical scenes. Finish became a matter of debate, since a canvas showing visible brushwork and unblended colour was read by critics as unfinished, and the argument about what constitutes a completed painting occupied a generation. Colour handling changed, with shadows painted in colour rather than in brown and with complementary colours placed side by side. And the idea that a painting records a specific moment under specific light, rather than a general view, became available.
Painting weather
The practical problem of a subject that changes is handled by a set of methods that painters describe consistently. Working in short sessions and returning at the same time on subsequent days keeps the light comparable, which is how larger outdoor works are made and which requires the weather to cooperate. Establishing the overall value relationships in the first few minutes, before anything has shifted, fixes the structure and lets later work fill it in. Making rapid small studies rather than one large painting captures more of what changes. Some painters work on several canvases at once, returning to each as the light comes round to match it, which is the approach one nineteenth-century painter used for his famous series of the same subject under different conditions. And accepting that the painting records a construction rather than a single instant is the honest position, since no painting is made in the time light stays still.
The practice now
Outdoor painting continues as a widespread practice and its purposes have shifted. For many painters it functions as training rather than as production, since working fast from observation under changing light develops judgement about colour and value that studio work from photographs does not, and the consensus among people who teach painting is that the two produce measurably different skills. Photography changed the relationship, since a camera records the information and removes the practical necessity, which means working outdoors is now a choice about process rather than a requirement. Organised events where painters work outdoors competitively within a time limit have become common. The equipment has improved considerably without changing the fundamentals, and the constraints that shaped nineteenth-century practice, namely limited time and changing light, are exactly the same.
The takeaway
Paint in collapsible metal tubes from the 1840s, portable easels and manufactured pigments made finished outdoor work practical. Changing light forces speed, which forces simplification and visible brushwork, and daylight pushes colour higher in key. The shift was treating the outdoor painting as finished rather than as a study, which made unblended surfaces a subject of argument about what completion means.