Work / Case study 07

Plein Air

Where the Impressionists painted

Role: Solo — product, design, engineering
Timeline: 2026
Stack: Swift, SwiftUI, MapKit, Observation
Release: In App Store review

It started at the MFA

When I was a college student in Boston, I used to go to the MFA just to spend time with its Impressionist collection. Standing in front of Monet's haystacks, I felt transported into the fields of Normandy, a place I had never visited. I kept thinking: it would be kind of amazing to see where these paintings came from — not just the museum wall where they hang now, but the actual riverbank, garden, harbor, or street where an artist set up an easel.

So I made Plein Air: an atlas for finding the real places behind great paintings. It maps more than 140 works, lets you learn about the artists and paintings, and connects each canvas to the place as it looks today. It is for exploring from the couch, but also for the much better version: taking it with you somewhere.

Plein Air's daily painting view, featuring a painting by Eugène Boudin — A painting of the day, framed as a small editorial encounter

Follow the paintings into the world

The map is the primary way in. Open a region, find the cluster of work around a town or coastline, and see paintings as little canvases rather than generic pins. You can follow Monet through Giverny, Pissarro along the Seine, or find the locations hidden in and around Paris. It feels less like browsing a database and more like following a loose itinerary through art history.

Plein Air map with painting clusters around Giverny, Argenteuil, Paris, and Fontainebleau — Clusters reveal where painters returned to the same landscape

Then & now

The bit I love most is turning between the painting and a present-day photograph of the same view. Sometimes a harbor or a bridge has changed completely; other times the scene is strangely still there. The interaction treats them as two separate views of one place, not an image match that has to be perfect — a century apart, side by side.

Historical painting view for a Plein Air location — Then — the canvas

Present-day photograph view for the same Plein Air location — Now — the same place, a century later

Also: where the paintings live now

A painting's story does not end at the place it depicts. Plein Air also shows the museum where the work hangs today, so a map pin can turn into the next museum visit. You can keep a small notebook of paintings you have seen and places you have visited, too.

I wanted the app itself to stay quiet: no account, ads, tracking, or location permission. The full catalog ships with the app, so it is useful on the road without a connection.

Painters become paths through the collection

Paris locations listed in Plein Air — Places make a natural travel index

Outcome

Plein Air is currently in App Store review. The first release covers 140+ paintings across 14 regions, 22 painters, and 88 museums, with English, French, and Japanese localization. The App Store link will be added here as soon as it is live.