1. Introduction: What Is Alla Prima Painting?
Portrait of Jasper Schade
Frans Hals, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Alla prima, meaning “at the first attempt,” is a direct painting technique where the artist works rapidly, applying wet paint over wet without waiting for earlier layers to dry.
This approach emphasizes immediacy, spontaneity, and painterly energy. Unlike traditional multi-layered methods requiring painstaking glazes and underpaintings, alla prima invites boldness, fluidity, and decisive execution.
The technique surged in popularity during the 19th century, particularly among the Impressionists, who sought to capture fleeting effects of light and atmosphere.
Yet its roots stretch back to the Renaissance and Baroque masters, who often worked swiftly to capture sitters or scenes in one session. Today, alla prima continues to inspire both plein-air painters and studio artists drawn to its vitality and freedom.
2. The Special Qualities of Alla Prima
Spontaneity and Freshness
Alla prima paintings radiate life. The brushwork is visible, unpolished, and expressive, preserving the exact moment of creation. Every stroke carries intention, contributing to an overall sense of movement and freshness.
Capturing the Ephemeral
The method excels in plein-air settings, where light changes within minutes. By working wet-into-wet, artists can record shifting skies, rippling water, or glowing dawns before they vanish. This immediacy makes alla prima invaluable for landscapes and urban scenes.
Lively Brushwork and Texture
The surface of an alla prima painting often features thick impasto passages, scraped areas, and visible bristle marks. This painterly surface celebrates the materiality of paint itself, drawing viewers into both subject and process.
Organic Color Blending
Because strokes overlap while still wet, colors merge directly on the canvas, producing luminous transitions and vibrant mixtures impossible to replicate with dry layers and glazes.
Embracing Imperfection
Alla prima is as much about discovery as control. Mistakes become opportunities—scraped away, reworked, or even celebrated as expressive marks that add authenticity and energy.
3. Principles for Successful Alla Prima
-
Preparation: Artists pre-mix sufficient colors on the palette to maintain consistency.
-
Brushwork: Starting with large brushes for bold shapes, finishing with smaller tools for refinement.
-
Dark to Light: Establishing shadows first, then layering highlights, ensures luminosity.
-
Controlled Tempo: Working steadily but not laboriously, balancing speed with judgment.
-
Corrections: Wet paint can be adjusted, scraped, or blended, allowing flexibility within spontaneity.
4. Five Masterpieces in Alla Prima
4.1 The Gypsy Girl by Frans Hals (c. 1625)
Frans Hals, a Dutch Golden Age master, is often celebrated for his uncanny ability to infuse portraits with life. The Gypsy Girl epitomizes this quality. The painting depicts a young woman with a mischievous smile, her lips slightly parted, and her gaze engaging directly with the viewer.
Hals’s brushwork is confident, almost reckless at times, with quick strokes forming the fabric of her blouse and the sheen of her skin. Unlike the polished academic style dominant in his era, Hals preferred to work directly and swiftly, achieving remarkable vibrancy. In this portrait, the alla prima technique is visible in the bold handling of light on the woman’s face and the textured rendering of her loose hair. Nothing feels over-finished; instead, the immediacy of the session lingers, as though the sitter has just turned her head. The result is both intimate and timeless—a moment captured in paint.
4.2 Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet (1872)
 |
| Claude Monet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Impression, Sunrise Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris |
Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise is not only one of the most famous alla prima works but also the painting that gave Impressionism its name.
Created at the port of Le Havre, it captures the fleeting moment of dawn, with a hazy orange sun rising through mist over the harbor.
Monet painted it rapidly on site, using swift, wet-into-wet strokes to suggest rippling water, drifting smoke, and silhouetted ships.
The brushwork is loose and atmospheric, refusing to define details and instead prioritizing the sensation of light. The luminous blending of grays and blues with sudden bursts of orange demonstrates the strength of alla prima color mixing. Unlike laborious studio pieces, this painting embodies spontaneity—it feels unfinished yet profoundly evocative. Critics of the time dismissed it as “a sketch,” but that very sketch-like immediacy defines its power. Today, it remains a quintessential example of how alla prima can capture both time and atmosphere.
4.3 The Luncheon on the Grass by Édouard Manet (1863)
Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass shocked audiences at its debut, not only for its unconventional subject—a nude woman seated casually among clothed men in a park—but also for its direct painting style. Rejecting academic traditions of careful underdrawings and layered glazes, Manet applied paint with audacity and speed. The figures are defined by broad, opaque strokes laid over a light ground, creating bold contrasts of tone.
Brushwork remains visible in the grass, fabric, and flesh, giving the painting a raw vitality. This choice of alla prima emphasized the modernity of both subject and execution, aligning Manet with avant-garde tendencies that challenged convention. The immediacy of his technique mirrored the audacity of the composition itself. While critics derided the painting as scandalous and unfinished, it became a pivotal work in modern art history—proving that alla prima could convey not only fleeting impressions but also radical ideas.
4.4 Monet Painting at the Edge of a Wood by John Singer Sargent (1885)
John Singer Sargent, known for his dazzling society portraits, was also a master of alla prima. 
Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood
John Singer Sargent, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In Monet Painting at the Edge of a Wood, Sargent depicts his friend Claude Monet at work outdoors.
The scene itself is informal—a painter hunched at his easel, framed by trees—but Sargent’s handling of paint is energetic and fluid.
He applies broad strokes to capture dappled sunlight on foliage, swift marks for Monet’s clothing, and loosely suggested brushstrokes for the surrounding landscape. The focus is not on precision but on atmosphere and immediacy, echoing Monet’s own method.
What makes this work remarkable is its meta-quality: a painting, executed alla prima, of another artist painting alla prima. It demonstrates Sargent’s admiration for Impressionist spontaneity while showcasing his own technical command. The painting embodies the friendship between two masters and stands as a lively homage to the act of painting itself.
4.5 Portraits by Michael Del Priore (Late 20th–Early 21st Century)
Michael Del Priore, an American portraitist, has carried the alla prima tradition into the modern era with remarkable success. 
Susan Kissimon portrait by Michael Del Priore
Michael Del Priore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Over his career, he has completed more than 850 portraits, many of them painted in a single sitting. His sitters include governors, judges, corporate leaders, and private patrons—all rendered with striking likeness and presence.
Del Priore follows in the footsteps of John Singer Sargent, favoring direct application of paint to capture not only a sitter’s appearance but also their personality.
In his portraits, you can see the hallmarks of alla prima: bold strokes that define form, wet-into-wet blending for skin tones, and confident highlights laid directly over darker passages.
Unlike labor-intensive academic portraiture, his works preserve the energy of live interaction between painter and subject. Each painting feels like an encounter frozen in time, proof that alla prima remains a vital and respected technique in contemporary realist art.
|
| Portrait of Jasper Schade Frans Hals, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
5. Comparative Insights
These five works illustrate the versatility of alla prima across genres and centuries:
-
Hals used it to inject vivacity into portraiture.
-
Monet relied on it to seize transient light.
-
Manet wielded it to disrupt academic convention.
-
Sargent employed it to celebrate atmosphere and artistic camaraderie.
-
Del Priore continues the lineage with modern realism.
Together, they prove that alla prima is not merely a technique but a philosophy of painting that embraces immediacy, vitality, and authenticity.
6. Conclusion
Alla prima painting invites artists to work with courage, directness, and honesty. It forgoes endless revisions for the thrill of immediacy, transforming wet paint into luminous, living surfaces. From the spirited brushwork of Frans Hals to the shimmering light of Monet, from Manet’s radical modernity to Sargent’s painterly homage, and finally to Michael Del Priore’s contemporary portraits, the technique continues to evolve while retaining its essence.
Whether practiced in the studio or en plein air, alla prima celebrates the joy of painting in the present tense—reminding both artists and viewers that art can be as fresh and fleeting as the moment it seeks to capture.
References
-
jamesspencerartist.co.uk
-
artmatcher.com
-
principlearttalk.com
-
finearttutorials.com
-
artistsandillustrators.co.uk
-
drawpaintacademy.com
-
barbtoland.com
-
jacksonsart.com
-
en.wikipedia.org
