Plein-Air Painting

Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869.

Monet painted La Grenouillère alongside his friend and fellow Impressionist artist Renoir. Together, they set up their easels at this boating and bathing resort along the Seine River, and painted surrounded by the environment they wanted to capture. This technique of outdoor painting is known as plein-air painting. Plein-air painting derives from the Barbizon School, a school of French painters who mostly produced landscape work with a commitment to close observation and naturalistic representation, often choosing to depict the Fontainebleau Forest. While the Barbizon artists usually painted only preliminary sketches within nature, Monet completed large-scale canvases en plein air, and then reworked and added the finishing touches in his studio. Monet learned about plein-air painting while he was still living in Le Havre, displaying his caricatures in a shop window alongside the work of landscape artist Eugène Boudin. Monet found Boudin quite strange. Boudin only painted landscapes, and he did this working directly in the nature he was depicting on his canvas. Grudgingly, Money accepted an apprenticeship under Boudin, and he learned to paint within nature as well. Monet declared that this experience opened his eyes, facilitating his understanding and love of nature.