En plein air or outdoor landscape painting began with the Romantics 1789-1830 whose search for authenticity bestowed particular value to spontaneous sketching from nature.  Plein air work was encouraged and facilitated not only by its freedom from studio rents, but also by the invention of the metal tube in which slow drying oil paint could be stored almost indefinitely.

Our little town of Lewes, Delaware, coined the First Town in the First State, provides some of the loveliest scenes to paint en plain air, including the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal, Lewes Beach, the Great Marsh Preserve, 2nd Street in downtown Lewes and the Cape Henlopen State Park, to name a few.

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The high point of plein air art came with the emergence of Impressionism, the world famous art movement named after the picture Impression, Sunrise in 1873 by Claude Monet. Other leading champions of Impressionist landscape painting included artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and continued with Vincent Van Gogh.

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