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Plein Air Painting is about painting on site and creating beautiful scenes fully from life in a natural setting. Its origins started centuries ago as a way to capture color and light, and works created in this method were often used by artists as reference sketches when creating academic studio works. However, this style of painting took on a life of its own, becoming a favorite of the French Impressionists. Their desire to paint light and its changing, ephemeral qualities, married with the creation of transportable paint tubes and the box easel, allowed artists the freedom to paint "en plein air," which is the French expression for "in the open air".