After several months of hiatus, the Plein Air blog is back! Our new Artist Daily editor, Courtney Jordan, and I have worked out a biweekly schedule to get the Plein Air blog back on track, and I’m excited to resume coverage of the artists, events, exhibitions, tools and tips, and conservation issues that matter most to you as painters and interpreters of nature.

I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that plein air painting is something artists of all styles, subject matter, and strengths can enjoy. Throughout history numerous landscape approaches have emerged either in tandem with or in opposition to the stylistic movements that were being pioneered indoors by figure, portrait, or still life painters. Whether those plein air paintings were used as preparatory sketches for larger studio pieces or considered finished works in their own right, working outdoors from nature at some point in the process was, and continues to be, of supreme importance to a great many landscape painters.

Jeffrey Morseburg—the owner of Morseburg Galleries, in Los Angeles—has become an expert on the great landscape painter Robert Wood, having learned of the artist through his father’s personal and professional relationship with Wood, as well as having organized two retrospectives and a website devoted to him. Here Morseburg shares an article he wrote on the life and work of this great American landscape painter.