There is no place better for plein air painting than the Upper Delaware Region. Every day, there’s a new adventure around each bend of the Delaware River. It’s just waiting to be captured on canvas. That’s why plein air artists flock to our region like kids chasing an ice cream truck.
Each artist who makes a connection here has very personal stories to tell. Some tried painting for the very first time at a plein air event. For others, a creation along the Upper Delaware River was the crowning achievement of a very productive career.
Here’s what a few local artists have to say about painting en plein air:

“Painting outdoors and feeling the environment with all my senses is like meditation that takes me away from my everyday tasks.”—Eija Friedlander, Shohola, PA

“Plein Air is like waving a Harry Potter wand as your brush is playing in the creation.”—Robert Bradley, Dingmans Ferry, PA

“I value the immediacy and spontaneity of painting outdoors—those spilt second decisions about color, shape and mark. There’s an urgency to capture the scene as the light changes and storm clouds pass overhead. I love being out in the elements and challenged to capture the essence of the scene unfolding before me.”—Annette Rusin, Pond Eddy, NY (and Brooklyn)

The theory and language of plein air painting first took shape in France in the 1800s, when a group of artists challenged the idea that painting portraits in a studio should be their highest aspiration. They developed the  idea of a “landscape portrait” created outdoors—en plein air.

In the late 1800s, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir experimented with painting outdoors, sometimes using umbrellas to control the light.

The Delaware River and Catskill Mountains were popular subjects for painters of the Hudson River School of plein air artists, founded by Thomas Cole. He first came to the Catskills in 1825, and created such masterpieces as “The Clove, Catskills” (1825) and “View on the Catskill—Early Autumn” (1837).
Cole preached about direct observation of nature—immersing oneself in the scene. Plein air artists often form an emotional connection with the scenery they are painting.

The talents of Cole, his friends and his students made painting en plein air popular in our area. It’s fair to say that their creations made a contribution to the conservation movement, whose goal was to preserve the natural environment many people only saw in these paintings.
There’s no room here to share all of the splendor, but here are some of the more famous plein air masterpieces created locally.

During the 1840s, Worthington Whittredge traveled across the country and created paintings of many rivers, including “Scene on the Upper Delaware.”
On an outing in the Catskills with his friend, a poet, in 1849, Asher Brown Durand created “Kindred Spirits.”
“The Lackawanna Valley” by George Inness was commissioned by the first president of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in 1855, and includes a representation of the railroad’s first roundhouse.

Inness' “Delaware Water Gap” was thought to be completed in the 1850s as well.

Jasper Francis Cropsey worked in watercolors and specialized in autumn scenes like “Autumn on the Delaware” (1856).

Nowadays, much of the Upper Delaware is managed by the National Park Service, whose job it is to protect the environment that inspired these early plein air artists. The tradition of painting en plein air is carried on at annual local events like Plein Air Milford and at community painting parties on both sides of the river.
This work is supported by the Greater Pike Community Foundation’s Richard L. Snyder Fund on the Pennsylvania side and the Statewide Community Regrant Program, a program of the NYS Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the NY State Legislature and administered by the Delaware Valley Arts Association on the New York side.
If you’d like to try your hand at plein air painting, local organizations such as the Barryville Area Arts Association (http://www.barryvilleareaarts.org/PleinAirAd
ventures.html) and Zane Grey Plein Air (Zane Grey Plein Air) host workshops, community painting parties and plein air exhibitions.