True to Nature. Open-air Painting in Europe 1780-1870

The eighteenth century witnessed the development of painting in the open ait An important impulse came from young artists visiting Rome as part of their education, and venturing into the Italian countryside to train their eyes and their hands in transcribing the effects of light on a range of natural and architectural features. This became an essential aspect of artistic practice, and spread throughout Europe in the nineteenth century.
Our publication focuses on the results of these exercises in conveying the immediacy of the natural phenomena they observed. The artists represented include Thomas Jones, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Achille-Etna Michallon, Camille Corot, André Giroux, Theodore Rousseau, Edgar Degas, Simon Denis, Anton Sminck Pitloo, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Johan Thomas Lundbye, Vilhelm Kyhn, Carl Blechen, Johann= Martin von Rohden, Johann Jakob Frey, and a number of others.
The sketches demonstrate the skill and ingenuity with which each artist quickly translated these first-hand observations of atmospheric, geological and topographical effects while the impression was still fresh.