IRVINE, CA.- From May 17 to October 2, 2014, The Irvine Museum presents Then and Now: 100 Years of Plein Air Painting, a special exhibition featuring California landscape paintings from 1903 to 2013.

The exhibition features a selection of The Irvine Museum's celebrated historic landscape paintings alongside contemporary plein air works. Works range from A Clear Day by William Wendt (c. 1903), to the most recent work featured in the exhibition, Sunset by Alexander Orlov (2013).

Featured historic artists include Benjamin Chambers Brown (1865-1942), Frank Cuprien (1871-1946), Frederick Melville DuMond (1867-1927), Euphemia Charlton Fortune (1885-1969), John Bond Francisco (1863-1932), John Frost (1890-1937), William Alexander Griffith (1866-1940), Paul Grimm (1891-1974), Sam Hyde Harris (1889-1977), Anna Hills (1882-1930), Emil Kosa, Jr. (1903-1968), and William Wendt (1865-1946).

Contemporary artists include noted plein air painters working today Peter Adams, Ken Auster, Jacobus Baas, Ken Backhaus, John Budicin, John Cosby, David Damm, Anita Hampton, Jeff Horn, Gregory Hull, William Jennings, Kevin MacPherson, Michael Obermeyer, Alexander Orlov, Jesse Powell, Camille Pryzwodek, Scott Prior, Jeff Sewell, Michael Situ, Liz Tolley, and Jim Wodark.

The term "plein-air" comes from the French phrase en plein-air, which is an idiom that does not translate directly, but simply means "outdoors." Similarly, in Italian, the phrase is al fresco, and in Spanish it is al aire libre. Plein air painting is a specialized genre that landscape painters have utilized for more than one hundred and fifty years. The plein air approach is a landscape painter's most effective tool for capturing the effect of natural light.

The tradition of painting landscapes nearly died out with the onset of Modernism in the 1940s, and thereafter with the development of abstract art in the 1950s and 1960s. However, starting in the 1980s, contemporary artists began to look once more at the beauty of the land, and a thriving revival of American landscape painting took hold. California, with its beautiful and vibrant landscape, was and is at the center of the renewed interest in landscape painting.

"Much of what originally made California a 'Golden Land' was directly linked to the environment, especially the land and water that nurtured and sustained a rare quality of life," said Chairman of The Irvine Museum Joan Irvine Smith. "Over a hundred years ago, the splendor of nature fascinated artists and compelled them to paint beautiful paintings. As we view these rare and remarkable paintings, we are returned, all too briefly, to a time long ago when the land and its bounty were open and almost limitless. Today, with the renaissance of the glorification of nature in art, that spirit is motivating enlightened people in the same way it energized artists of the past."