At Pluralsight, we don't just teach skills.

We are building the tech workforce, who deliver results fast, accelerated by top-tier content.

Lead with confidence, lead with expertise.

Visit us at plural site.com to tap in and learn more.

Art critic and author Sebastian Smee, his new book is Paris and Ruins, Love War and the Birth of Impressionism.

Plain Air Painting. At first it seemed ordinary to say it that way. Why not go outside and look?

But that was a turning of the page. That wasn't how it was supposed to be done. You were in a studio.

Maybe you worried about the sunlight coming through from the north,

but you didn't deal with the moving sun all day long or the shades of colors that came from the sunlight.

That's the breakthrough, I understand. Do I have that right, Sebastian? Light.

Absolutely. And it's to do with painting outside in front of the subject. And we sort of think,

well, what's radical about that? But in fact, it was radical. I mean, the truth is that painters

had started doing this about 80 years earlier, you know,

the end of the 18th century, but they hadn't considered anything they did in that way,

exhibitable.

You know, it shouldn't be shown in exhibitions or sold or anything like that.

It was just done to study nature.

And then you would go back to the studio and work up a serious canvas and present it to the salon.

You know, so that was the way it was for a long time. And then it was the impressionists who first

said, no, no, we are really interested in these effects of light.

We want to liberate color.

We're not so interested in carefully worked up compositions with allegorical meanings

...