Above all, the outdoor painter should get the character and feeling of the place he portrays on his canvas. If in Spain, his picture must look like Spain. The air must be transparent, the architecture clean-cut against the azure. If it be Holland, the atmosphere must be moist, the air like a veil, and with all this there must be nothing in the work that will be mistaken for the smoke-laden air of England. Only thus, by this fidelity to the very nature and spirit of a place, can the picture be made to express the essence of its life, which is really the heart of the whole mystery.
Excerpt from Francis Hopkinson Smith's Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago given in 1914, which is probably why the outdoor painter portrayed scenes on his canvas while all the ladies perhaps stayed indoors and made a nice pitcher of lemonade to quench the outdoor painter's deep artistic thirst.
Pictured: The Port of London -- Claude Monet, 1871
