The exhibition brings together over one hundred and fifty oil studies from the collections of the Fondation Custodia in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and a private collector, offering a fresh look at open-air landscape painting in Europe between 1780 and 1870.

Occupying a place between painting and drawing, these études – or studies – were small-scale works, mostly executed on paper, and painted quickly before the motif in order to train the hand and the eye in capturing fleeting effects of light and colour. Though some were later embellished in the studio, they were not seen as finished pictures intended for sale or exhibition, but as a precious resource which artists could draw upon to bring a sense of freshness and immediacy to their official work. At the time, they would only have been known to an intimate circle of friends, colleagues or students.