pochade

Pochade comes from the French verb pocher, which originally meant to make a rough outline or to sketch hastily. The word is related to poche (pocket) — a pochade is something you might produce from your pocket, dashed off quickly. By the eighteenth century, pochade meant a small, quickly executed painting or color study, usually done outdoors. The emphasis was on speed and spontaneity over finish.

The pochade box, developed in the nineteenth century, was a compact wooden case that contained a palette, space for tubes of paint, and a lid that doubled as a small easel. The box could be carried in a bag or large pocket. Corot, Boudin, and the Barbizon painters used pochade boxes for outdoor sketching trips in the 1840s and 1850s. The box solved a practical problem: how to paint outdoors without hauling a full studio setup. The answer was to miniaturize everything.

Pochade studies were not meant to be finished paintings. They were notes — records of light, color, and atmosphere captured quickly before conditions changed. A painter might produce three or four pochades in a morning, each capturing a different light effect. These studies became source material for larger studio paintings. Constable's oil sketches, Turner's color studies, and Monet's early plein air work all function as pochades, whether or not they were called that.

The word has gained new currency among contemporary plein air painters, who use 'pochade' to describe both the box and the small paintings it produces. A pochade painting is typically under 8 by 10 inches — small enough to complete in one session, small enough to carry home wet. The French sketch became an equipment category and a painting format. The pocket size became the point.