The earliest surviving example of a painted landscape is a fresco in Akrotiri, an Aegean Bronze Age settlement from 3000 BCE on the Greek island of Santorini. Elements of landscape were also depicted in Ancient Egypt, often as a backdrop for hunting scenes set in the reeds of the Nile Delta. In both cases, the emphasis was on individual plant forms and figures on a flat plane, rather than the broad landscape. During Medieval times, landscape painting disappears almost entirely, when all art that was not directly Christian was considered blasphemous, and backgrounds and perspective were irrelevant.

In the 14th century, Italian painter Giotto began to reincorporate elements of nature and deeper spaces into his work, and by the 15th century nature was established as a genre. Landscapes were increasingly elevated beyond the unassuming background.

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, a French painter living in Rome, was influential in elevating the status of open-air painting. Early nineteenth century painting incorporated landscapes as the backdrop to a historical event or a mythical tableau. Valenciennes proposed his idea of developing a "landscape portrait" in which the artist paints a landscape directly while looking upon it. He argued passionately that the landscape painter must become an expert observer of nature, urging artists to sketch and paint in the outdoors.

Landscape painting took on increasing prominence and prestige in the Romantic period, beginning in Europe in the late 18th century and spreading to the United States. Painters of romanticism sought to provide an image that represented a feeling towards the Earth and life, rather than the exact way it would appear to the naked human eye.

The emergence of the Realism movement (mid-19th century) is often seen as marking the end of Romanticism, as artists began to focus on depicting everyday life with more accuracy and less emphasis on emotional expression.

europe gives rise to a movement

Painting en plein air, the artist seeks to reproduce the true colors they observe in the landscape. Working quickly, rather than with slow studied accuracy, intricate details are implied as visual suggestions or impressions. The painting may capture the scenes’ mood and ambiance, using brushstrokes that are looser and more expansive. These techniques led to Impressionism in the late nineteenth century. 

en plein air is from the French meaning, “in the open air”

Painting en plein air defines a simple technical approach using spontaneous brushwork and a light palette. Painting outside enables artists to capture the fleeting transformations of changing light from the sun’s movement, and the effects of evolving weather and atmosphere.

Painters of the landscape were constrained to work in the studio for reasons of logistics; transporting the mixed pigments outdoors was cumbersome. As a result, outdoor work was confined to sketches or preliminary studies for reference, returning to the studio to complete the painting.

The Mother of Invention

One creative option was a fragile glass syringe for [gently] transporting mixed paints. Going a step further, the clever American painter and inventor, John Goffe Rand patented his collapsible paint tube in America in 1841.

The durable tin tube allowed unused oil paint to be stored and used later without drying out. Another significant tool was the box easel with built-in paint box and telescopic legs. Plein air painting proliferated as these new tools were employed by landscape artists on the move, making painting en plein air ever more accessible.

Natural pigments were often expensive and difficult to obtain

The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century saw the development and mass production of synthetic pigments. Synthetic pigments were found to be more opaque and less soluble than organic pigments, producing brighter, more intense hues. The availability of synthetic pigments positively impacted the art world by providing a wider range of colors.

The artist’s tools had evolved, giving artists the freedom to move about in the open air. The natural world, with all its spontaneity, often included people engaged in day to day living.

Coming to America

The 1825 American expansion and Manifest Destiny imbued the untamed countryside with the symbolism of the country's promised prosperity and limitless resources. The terrain provided an alternative to European culture and history; it became a picturesque, patriotic, and inspirational theme. 

The Hudson River school was the first native school of painting in the United States from about 1825 to 1870. It was strongly nationalistic both in its proud celebration of the natural beauty of the American landscape and in the desire of its artists to become independent of European schools of painting. The loosely connected group of American landscape painters explored the wilderness which was fast disappearing from the Hudson Valley. Completing large-scale works in their New York studios, they thrilled audiences and celebrated the awesome power of nature and the progress of man.

American artists were influenced by emerging European styles, notably the French Barbizon School of landscape painting roughly from 1830 through 1870. The style represented landscape genre in a softer manner; most prominent features of this school are its tonal qualities, color, and loose brushwork. Members were drawn together by their passion for painting en plein air and their desire to elevate landscape painting from a mere background. 

By 1875, the movement's idealized wilderness had inspired the seeds of conservation that would lead to the federal protection of wild spaces. After the Civil War, the school's popularity waned as the country became more industrialized and expanded.  As the American frontier was pushed further westward, landscape artists chronicled the disappearing wilderness and the expanding presence of modern civilization. 

Theodore Robinson was one of the first American artists to embrace Impressionism in the late 1880s. Visiting Giverny and developing a close friendship with Claude Monet, Robinson was encouraged to render the beauty of nature in a manner truthful to one's vision. Much of his work in Giverny depicted the surrounding countryside in different weather, in the plein air tradition. Robinson returned to America in 1892, influenced by his time in Giverny with Monet, significantly mobilizing the American Impressionist movement.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American artists flocked to France in search of instruction, critical acclaim, and patronage. Some, including James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Mary Cassatt, became highly regarded in the French press, advancing their careers on both sides of the Atlantic. Easily recognized French impressionists included Claude Monet, August Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, and (even though she was born in Pittsburgh) Mary Cassatt.

America's leading impressionist, however, was the expatriate Mary Cassatt. She also used her social standing as the daughter of a Pennsylvania banker to persuade other wealthy Americans to purchase avant-garde art, thereby helping introduce French impressionism to the United States. Since she lived abroad and, from 1879 to 1886, participated in four exhibitions that the impressionists held in Paris, the National Gallery of Art displays Mary Cassatt's paintings in its French rooms.

The Golden State

Beginning in the late 1880s and continuing into the early part of the twentieth century, artists in California painted in an artistic style which exalted the picturesque landscape and unique light of this State. This style, which is often called California Impressionism or California Plein-Air painting, combined several distinctive aspects of American and European art.

In keeping with the techniques of Impressionism, California’s plein air painters determined that the best way to paint a landscape was to be in the landscape.

Painting the delicate and fleeting effect of California’s light necessitated the technique of direct and quick application of paint. Like their French forbears, they largely painted en plein-air, taking advantage of the mild climate and the singular quality of Southern California light.

Artists rendered the rich California landscape north and south: foothills, mountains, seashores, and deserts of the interior and coastal regions. The art scene's first commercial galleries opened and began to draw artists and patrons, and a light, airy Impressionist aesthetic became dominant. The California Impressionist’s robust colors and loose, painterly brushwork revealed influences from French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. En plein air and Impressionism spread across America with art colonies developing in places like Carmel-by-the-Sea and Laguna Beach as well as in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and even over to Giverny in France. 

Impressionist-influenced painting remained popular in California well after it receded in Europe and the Eastern United States. By the late 1920s the California Impressionists had popularized landscape painting as a subject, encouraging broader appreciation for California's natural beauty among the public. The California trend helped establish landscape painting as a significant genre, further shaping the image of California as a cultural and artistic destination.

In the 1930s, impressionism was seen as old-fashioned and conservative more modern styles became accepted. California Impressionism reached its peak of popularity before the Great Depression. Students of the Impressionist-influenced approach continued to popularize plein air painting.

Though the practice of plein air painting has endured, it seemed to quiet down for several decades. A resurgence of the outdoor painter appears in the 1980s, mostly in California. Today the movement is unstoppable; branded “the new golf”, tens of thousands have taken up plein air painting across the world.

California plein air painters continue to excite the popularity of this genre. The work of the various regions of our state’s plein air painters is represented by the unique character of the lands and lifestyles within each region. Humboldt County and Northern California artists whose work is compelling and unique to our northern environs with its magical landscapes, continue to embrace plein air painting.

Local plein air groups may be found online or through galleries.

Bug Press Printing • 1461 M Street • Arcata, California • 707-822-2001 • print@bugpress.com

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1461 M STREET, ARCATA

John James Audubon's Birds of America is a portal into the natural world. Printed between 1827 and 1838, it contains hundreds of life-size watercolors of North American birds (Havell edition), all reproduced from hand-engraved plates, and is considered to be the archetype of wildlife illustration. Nearly 200 years later, the Audubon prints are coming to life once again, thanks to the generosity of the National Audubon Society.

The images are provided courtesy of the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove in Audubon, Pennsylvania, and the Montgomery County Audubon Collection.

-Audubon Society

Seventeen of the eighteen free posters include native California birds. The entire collection of free high-resolution downloadable prints are available at the Audubon Society.

John James Audubon

John James Audubon was a naturalist, ornithologist, and artist most known for his major work Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints. The book, finished in 1839, contained illustrations depicting birds in their natural habitat and is still considered one of the greatest ornithological works ever made.

Audubon was the first known person to use the process of bird-banding in the Americas. He tied silver string to the legs of Eastern Phoebes and discovered that the birds returned to the same nesting spot the next year. The presence of the bands confirmed that the species’ had nesting fidelity and provided early insight into migratory patterns. Bird-banding is still a valuable tool in the study & conservation of many bird species and has been instrumental in the research of declining bird populations globally.

Our birds are vanishing

Several species of birds that Audubon painted may have since become extinct including Bachman’s Warbler, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Carolina Parakeet, Passenger Pigeon, Labrador Duck, Great Auk, Eskimo Curlew, and Pinnated Grouse. And more than that, the total bird population in the United States and Canada has fallen by 29 percent since 1970 (a decline of over 3 billion birds). This decline is attributed to habitat loss/fragmentation, the proliferation of neonicotinoid pesticides, window collisions, domestic cats, and poaching.

Kevin Gaston, a conservation biologist at the University of Exeter, said that new findings signal something larger at work: “This is the loss of nature.”

Birds have long been known as a “canary in the coalmine”, their sensitivity to changes in their environment serve as an early alert to changes that will eventually affect humans. The implication of these population declines could be far-reaching and signal the potential crash of global ecosystems, similar to honeybee colony collapses and melting glaciers. In addition, the presence of common bird species is vital to ecosystems, as they are responsible for “controlling pests, pollinating flowers, spreading seeds and regenerating forests. When these birds disappear, their former habitats often are not the same.”

“Declines in your common sparrow or other little brown bird may not receive the same attention as historic losses of bald eagles or sandhill cranes, but they are going to have much more of an impact.”

— Hillary Young, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara

About the printing

Each of the 435 39x26 inch double elephant folio prints were made utilizing labor-intensive intaglio print processes, and individually watercolored by hand. These methods of printing require considerably more time and skill than modern techniques, and so there were only 200 total Audubon books ever completed.

The cost of printing Birds of America was over $115,000 (two million in present day) and the entire process took over 11 years (1827-1838). Recently a complete Havell first edition sold for 11 million dollars in London.

In the Intaglio printing process, copper plates are incised by etching, engraving, and aquatint. The lines to be printed are cut into the metal, either by hand (engraving) or through the corrosive action of an acid (etching). Then inks are painted into the recessed lines of the plate and the surface is wiped to remove excess ink. Paper is then placed against the plate, covered by a blanket, and with the application of even pressure, the ink transfers from the grooves of the plate to the paper. This method is the opposite of relief printing, where the ink transfers from the surface, not the grooves.

Throughout history, people have used the arts as a way to spread ideas and discuss complex problems. Revolutionaries have often used posters and political cartoons to spread their messages quickly to a large audience. Frequently, the messages have involved fighting corruption in government, poverty, and a lack of personal freedoms & representation.

Not all protests end in revolutions. Some social problems can be resolved with civil resistance and negotiations, such apartheid or farmworkers strikes, or Vietnam/the draft. Sometimes the powers that be may buckle to social pressure and coercion. Demonstrations, petitions and vigils, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and occupations are alternatives to violence.  But they all share revolutionary ideas or a paradigm shift in thought. 

Violent revolution seems to depend on how much a government is willing to truly listen and negotiate with the demands of its people, and on whether the military sides with citizens or those in power during conflict. If there is a large amount of resistance and none of it is resolved in a peaceful way, if that discontentment and anger grows unchecked (and the institutions holding the country together are weak), then violence and civil war tends to be the result. 

This exhibit covers revolutionary and protest artwork from the United States, Russia, France, South Africa, Cuba, Syria, and Egypt.

From 1972 through 1977 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hired photographers and writers to document the degradation of our shared environments. Over 80,000 photographs were produced and now 15,000 have been made publicly available in the National Archives. 

For weeks we’ve spent time sorting through the archives to find images that we feel capture not only the vast extent of pollution at that time, but the bold, creative ways that Americans were able to innovate and repair their land.

When the EPA was first created it was not considered a political project. Unchecked land development, urban decay, and persistent air, water, and noise pollution were all so incredibly apparent that there was strong bipartisan support for the creation of the agency. 

The DOCUMERICA photography series was one of the very first EPA projects. It began in the early  1970’s to document the state of the environment at the time and the way that citizens interacted with their local environments, for better or worse. 

More than 100 professional photographers were paid $150 a day, given as much film as they could use, and sent around the country to document specific instances of pollution as well as the overall effects of unregulated industrialization on actual people. 

This unique approach went beyond simply documenting problems— it attempted to take a holistic view of the complicated relationships between the people and their land. This allowed photographers to examine where and how we live, and the role of urban planning and public spaces because, as was the project’s motto, “everything is connected to everything else.” 

From 1935-44, the Farm Security Administration hired photographers and writers to document the hardships of rural farming communities. The goal of the FSA photography project was "introducing America to Americans." Over 175,000 black and white negatives now reside in the FSA/OWI collection. 

Making a book: Production process