Culture | Travel
21 December 2025
5 min read
Plein Air, No Wi-Fi
What I loved most about Impressionism is the idea of plein air.
Taking your paints outside. Standing in real light. Feeling the air, the greenery, the movement of the world around you. No screens. No shortcuts. Definitely no Wi-Fi. You carried your paints, your paper, and your patience. Light was not something you edited later. It was something you chased, usually while the clouds were doing whatever they pleased.
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What also stood out was how deliberately these artists worked against convention. Leaving the studio to paint outdoors went against academic tradition. Choosing everyday life, changing cities, and ordinary moments as subjects was a shift in how art related to the world. It was practical, observational, and at the time, quite unconventional.
They also touch on how these artists criticised each other. Degas, for example, was teased for making paintings that looked almost unfinished. Too airy, too soft, too sketch-like. As if he was painting with cotton wool. Which, of course, is exactly what makes his work so interesting now.
The exhibition at the National Gallery Singapore, Into the Modern: Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, explains all of this beautifully. It is exceptionally well curated and easy to follow. You see Monet, Manet, Degas, Pissarro and others responding to a world that was changing fast, and each of them finding their own way of looking at it.
All the works come from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and seeing so many of these classics together is quite something. There are also films and archival material, including footage of Monet painting outside in his own garden. Watching him stand there, brush in hand, surrounded by greenery and shifting light, feels almost unreal. Probably every artist’s dream. To take some paper, some paint, and just go outside.
We had a go at it too. I sketched from photographs taken at the Botanical Gardens. Not quite plein air in the pure sense, but close enough to feel the joy of slowing down and actually looking. It reminded me how playful drawing can be when you remove expectations and put the phone away.
The exhibition runs until March next year. The National Gallery is open daily from 10 am to 7 pm. And honestly, even if you are not nearby, it is next door enough. Taking a bus for roughly RM120 return just to see this show is completely worth it. You walk out inspired, calmer, and gently reminded of what outside actually looks like.
Sometimes all it takes is light, time, and putting the phone down.
