Noam Gonnen

This article examines how notions of “material” and “materiality” were infused, both technically and discursively, into American landscape painting in the late nineteenth century. Focusing particularly on the praxis of open-air painting as consolidating a new mode in landscape painting as well as a new artistic identity, this article argues that painting outdoors was perceived by artists in terms of agency, uniting painter, painting, and landscape; but unlike earlier romantic or Transcendentalist approaches, this idea was not conceived of as a solely spiritual union but, rather, as a mode that is embedded in the mundane, in the existence of objects, of embodied engagement and material means. The overt affinity between the basic idea of the praxis—painting outdoors in ‘real’ nature—and material aspects of art-making, is discussed as the underpinning of a new emerging episteme of American landscape painting, while considering the environment wherein this phenomenon was cultivated with...

During the two last decades of the nineteenth century, open-air painting
became increasingly common in the United States. Beyond its popular appeal, the practice served for many artists as an important catalyst for change, reflecting a wide array of cultural shifts outside the discipline. This article examines the central role of open-air painting in the formation and regeneration of American art between 1880-1900 and approaches the genre not only
as a practice but as an epistemological tool. It focuses on how turn-of-the-century
painters in the northeastern United States employed open-air painting
to converse with the broad notion of openness and associated ideas such
as directness, truth, expansion, space, the elimination of barriers, and artistic freedom. This paper scrutinizes how these ideas came together with the practice of open-air painting to formulate a distinctive sensual, perceptual, and mental experience among both artists and contemporary viewers. While referring to a range of leading Gilded Age artists, the paper focuses primarily
on four influential painters: William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), John Henry
Twachtman (1853–1902), Winslow Homer (1836–1910), and Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917). Through open-air painting, each artist performs their own artistic approaches to and ideas about what openness is and what it stands for, and, although each articulates a different aspect of it, they all assume the ‘state of openness’ as a central axis. This lies at the heart of open-air painting’s major contribution as a practice that was re-evaluated and valorized within North American art, and which has not yet received the attention it is due.