Painting by the Edge of a Wood'' (1885) by
John Singer Sargent. Oil on canvas. 54.0 × 64.8 cm.
Tate Gallery, London. Before the 19th century, artists had mixed their own paints from raw pigments that they often ground themselves from a variety of
media. This had made for inconvenient portability and kept most painting activities confined to the studio. However, in the 1830s, the Barbizon school in France that included
Charles-François Daubigny and
Théodore Rousseau used the practice of
en plein air to depict the changing appearance of light accurately as weather conditions altered. This situation improved later in the 1800s when tubes of oil paint became available, allowing
En plein air painting to become viable for more artists. This was in part because of the invention of the collapsible paint tube in 1841 by American portraitist
John G. Rand. In the early 1860s, four young painters:
Claude Monet,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
Alfred Sisley and
Frédéric Bazille, met whilst studying under the academic artist
Charles Gleyre. They discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life, and they often ventured into the countryside together to paint in the open air. They discovered that they could paint in sunlight directly from nature, and making use of the vivid synthetic pigments that were available, they began to develop a lighter and brighter manner of painting that extended further the
Realism of
Gustave Courbet and the Barbizon school. It was radical practise at its inception, but by the later decades of the 19th century the theory had been absorbed into normal artistic practise. There were artists' colonies across France, such as the one at
Étaples on the Côte d'Opal that included landscape impressionists
Eugène Chigot and
Henri Le Sidaner. The latter artist specialised in translating
nocturne light to canvas using oil and pastel. The
Macchiaioli were a group of Italian painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century, who, breaking with the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian academies of art, did much of their painting outdoors in order to capture natural light, shade, and colour. This practice relates the Macchiaioli to the French Impressionists who came to prominence a few years later, although the Macchiaioli pursued somewhat different purposes. Their movement began in Florence in the late 1850s. In England the
Newlyn School was also a major proponent of the technique in the latter 19th century. There were lesser known artist colonies practising, including a loose collective at Amberley in West Sussex centred around the Paris trained
Edward Stott who produced atmospheric rural landscapes that were highly popular among some late Victorians. The movement expanded to America, starting in California then moving to other American locales notable for their natural light qualities, including the Hudson River Valley in New York. The act of outdoor painting from observation has been continually popular well into the 21st century. == Equipment and challenges ==