An exhibition of landscape sketches painted out-of-doors ('en plein air') by European artists in the decades before impressionism, organised by the Prefectural Museum of Shizuoka, Japan. It includes works by the pioneers of plein-air painting from the late 18th-century, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and Thomas Jones, as well as the more well known Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and John Constable. Also represented is a wide range of plein-air painters whose works have only recently been rediscovered and re-evaluated, including Simon Denis, Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy and Achille-Etna Michallon.
 

The Australian 'Impressionists' continued the tradition of the small, portable plein-air oil-sketch into the 20th century. A supplementary display of Australian works includes plein-air sketches by Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Elioth Gruner. The exhibition places these works in their true context: not of the French Impressionists, but in a well-established European tradition of sketching from nature in oils.

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Alphonse Henri Perin View of the Villa Medici, Rome 1827. Paul Desmarais Jr Collection