The Outdoor Revolution

The invention of portable paint tubes in the 1840s made Impressionism physically possible. Before metal tubes, artists ground pigments in their studios and carried paint in fragile bladders. Tube paint could travel anywhere, letting artists work directly before their subjects in natural light for the first time.

Monet, Renoir, and their colleagues took the radical step of finishing entire paintings outdoors rather than sketching outside and completing the work in the studio. That meant painting fast, catching light effects that shifted by the minute, and accepting a rougher finish.