The plein air easel, or French easel, is a portable box easel with built-in storage that made outdoor painting practical. From the Barbizon School to today, learn its history.
When you see photographs of Camille Pissarro painting outdoors at his home in Eragny in 1901, he is standing at a wooden box on a tripod. The box holds his paints and palette. The tripod legs support a canvas holder hinged to the back of the box. The whole thing folds up into a briefcase-sized package that he could carry from his house to the garden. This is the French easel, also called the box easel or plein air easel, and it is one of two inventions, along with the paint tube, that made plein air painting a practical reality for generations of painters.
A plein air easel, commonly called a French easel or box easel, is a portable easel that combines a canvas or panel holder with a storage box for art supplies. The design consists of a tilting panel or canvas holder hinged to a painting box, supported by wooden legs that are adjustable in length and fold against the sides and bottom of the box for carrying. When set up, the box serves as a palette and supply container. When folded, the entire unit becomes a compact package with a handle, carried like a briefcase or with a strap like a backpack.
This entry covers the history of the plein air easel, how it works, the different types available, and why this piece of equipment had such a significant impact on the history of painting.
The French easel has three main components: the box, the legs, and the canvas holder. The box is a wooden container, typically made of elm, beech, or oak, with a drawer insert that acts as a palette when in use. The drawer can hold tubes of paint, brushes, a small solvent container, and other supplies. The legs are wooden, adjustable in length with wingnuts, and fold against the sides and bottom of the box for transport. The canvas holder is a panel hinged to the back of the box that can be tilted and adjusted to hold canvases or panels of various sizes.
To set up a French easel, the painter unfolds the legs, adjusts their length with wingnuts to level the easel on uneven ground, and raises the canvas holder to the desired height. The drawer is pulled out and serves as a palette. Paints and brushes are stored inside the box. When the painting session is over, the easel folds down: the canvas holder lowers onto the top of the box, the legs fold against the sides, and the entire unit becomes a compact package roughly the size of a large briefcase.
The design is ingenious because it solves multiple problems at once. It provides a stable support for the canvas, a surface for mixing paint, storage for supplies, and portability, all in one package. Before the French easel, a painter working outdoors needed a separate easel, palette, paint box, and brush holder, all carried separately. The French easel integrated all of these into a single unit.
The box easel was invented in the mid-19th century, though the exact inventor is uncertain. The French manufacturer Jullian claims that its founder, Roger Jullian, invented the box easel in the mid-19th century, but this claim remains unproven. What is certain is that the box easel appeared in the same period as the collapsible paint tube (patented 1841) and that the two inventions together made plein air painting practical on a scale that had not been possible before.
A 1999 study in the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation documented the appearance of the portable easel in trade catalogs by 1857, sold by Goupil and Co. The study noted that the portable easel appears in Albert Bierstadt's painting Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall (1864), which depicts the artist's equipment set up in the California wilderness. By the 1850s, portable easels were being advertised in New York trade catalogs and in Paris by the 1887 Sennelier catalog. Read the study at JAIC.
The plein air easel emerged from a broader movement toward painting outdoors that began in the late 18th century. From 1708, Roger de Piles's Landscape treaty advised painters to work outdoors. Francois Desportes, a painter at the court of Louis XIV, left around seventy views of Ile-de-France painted outdoors with oils in the early 18th century. The Barbizon School of the 1830s and 1840s, including Theodore Rousseau and Charles-Francois Daubigny, made painting in the Forest of Fontainebleau a systematic practice. But these early plein air painters were working with heavy, cumbersome equipment. John Constable, one of the first adapters of outdoor painting, carried his paints in bags made from pig's bladders in a wooden cigar box, pinning small sections of canvas to the inside of the lid.
The box easel and the paint tube together transformed plein air painting from an arduous expedition into a manageable practice. The Musée Giverny notes that "the changes in equipment available to painters, and notably the sale of paints in tubes, made outdoor work even easier" and that artists "painted studies outdoors, which were completed in the evening in the studio." Read more at Musée Giverny.
Pissarro was the most dedicated plein air painter of the Impressionist generation. A photograph from 1901 shows him at his mobile easel in Eragny, painting in his garden. His brother-in-law Tiburce described Berthe Morisot, another plein air painter, as "wearing a backpack, tool in hand, with all the kit of a landscape artist" who "disappeared for whole days, going to the cliff from one motif to another depending on the time and angle of the sun." Pissarro's landscapes from Pontoise, painted outdoors with Cezanne in the 1870s, are among the foundational works of Impressionism.
Monet was an avid plein air painter who used a box easel throughout his career. His series paintings of the 1890s, including Haystacks (1890-1891) and Rouen Cathedral (1892-1894), required him to carry multiple canvases to a site and work on each for only a short time before the light changed. The box easel made this practice possible. Monet's late Water Lilies at Giverny involved carrying his easel and tubes to the edge of his water garden, sometimes working on multiple canvases simultaneously.
Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876, Musee d'Orsay) was painted outdoors in Montmartre. The scene of casual Parisian leisure required Renoir to set up his easel in a garden and paint the dappled light filtering through the trees. The portability of the box easel made it possible to work on a canvas of this size (131 x 175 cm) in an outdoor setting.
Bierstadt took his plein air easel to the American West. His Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall (1864) depicts the portable easel and stool that accompanied him on his expeditions. Bierstadt's easel, visible in the painting itself, is one of the earliest depictions of a box easel in use in America. The painting is in the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
The Spanish painter Sorolla used a box easel for his luminous beach scenes, including Walk on the Beach (1909, Museo Sorolla, Madrid). Sorolla painted directly on the beach at Valencia, capturing the blinding Mediterranean light with a speed and fluidity that the portable easel made possible. His outdoor paintings are among the most vivid examples of plein air work from the early 20th century.
These are modern versions of the 19th-century box easel. They come in full and half sizes, with various brands and configurations ranging in price from approximately $80 to $200 USD. The full-size French easel can hold stretched canvases up to about 34 inches, while the half-size is more compact and lighter. French easels are stable, can support large canvases, and double as studio easels. Their drawbacks are weight (a full-size French easel can weigh 10-15 pounds) and setup time compared to more modern designs.
A pochade box is a compact painting box with a built-in easel, designed for small paintings or sketches. The word comes from the French pochade, meaning a quick sketch. Unlike the French easel, which has legs built in, a pochade box is mounted on a photographic tripod. The painting surface is held in the lid of the box, and the palette sits in the base. Pochade boxes are lighter and more portable than French easels and have become the outdoor painting platform of choice for many contemporary plein air painters. They typically handle panels up to about 20 inches.
The Anderson easel was used in northern Europe in the early 19th century and experienced a revival in the United States through the painter Emile Gruppe and his Gloucester School of Art. It consists of a wooden tripod with adjustable legs held together by crossbars, with the canvas height adjusted by setting pegs into holes in the legs. The wide tripod stance gives exceptional stability, and Gloucester easels are well suited to holding large canvases and working in windy conditions. Unlike the French easel, they do not have built-in storage.
The simplest and cheapest outdoor easels, field easels consist of lightweight tripods of wood or metal with extendable legs and an attached panel holder. They are less sturdy than French easels or Gloucester easels but are the lightest and most portable option. They are suitable for small panels and light conditions but may struggle with larger canvases or wind.
The plein air easel remains in wide use in 2026, though the landscape of options has expanded. French box easels are still manufactured by Jullian, Mabef, and other companies. Pochade boxes from companies like Open Box M, Guerrilla Painter, and Art Box and Panel have gained popularity among painters who prioritize portability over the storage capacity of the French easel. Modern pochade boxes are often mounted on carbon fiber photographic tripods, reducing weight significantly compared to the traditional wooden legs of the French easel.
The plein air painting movement has experienced a renaissance in the last 30 years, with organized events, competitions, and festivals dedicated to outdoor painting. This revival has driven innovation in easel design, with manufacturers offering increasingly specialized and lightweight systems. But the basic principle remains the same as in the 1850s: a portable support for the canvas, a surface for the palette, and storage for supplies, all in one package that can be carried to the painting site.
The plein air easel is inseparable from the practice of plein air painting and from the paint tube that made portable paint possible. It is used with oil paint bound in linseed oil and thinned with solvents. The easel entry covers the broader history of easel types. For more on painting outdoors, read our post on plein air painting, or explore our guide to reading a painting.
The best place to see a plein air easel is not in a museum but in the field. Plein air painters can be found in parks, on coastlines, and in city streets, working at French easels and pochade boxes in the same way Pissarro and Monet did 150 years ago. The equipment has changed in detail but not in principle.
For a historical perspective, the Archives of the Musee Camille Pissarro in Pontoise holds photographs of Pissarro at his mobile easel in Eragny in 1901. The image shows a wooden box easel set up in a garden, with the painter standing behind it, palette in hand. It is the same basic setup you will see in any plein air painting gathering today.
For more on the materials of plein air painting, read our entries on the paint tube and plein air painting, or explore our post on oil painting and its materials.
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