Today, plein air festivals are a way to showcase a unique landscape or region to
professional plein air painters and supports these artists by providing an art market for their finished work.
Inspired by the flat East Anglian landscape with its big skies, Norfolk Broads and rivers, and by 17th century Dutch Realist
painters such as Meindert Hobbema (1638 - 1709) and Jacob van Ruisdael (1628 - 82), Norwich School artists included amateurs as well as
professionals, many of whom practised the avant - garde method of
plein air painting.