A new web project called Plein Air pairs your current weather with a matching public-domain painting, reviving the French tradition of painting outdoors. The app pulls your location, checks conditions through Open-Meteo, then serves a single artwork whose sky mirrors the hour outside — fog, storm, or long afternoon light.

Four institutions feed the collection: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Wikimedia Commons. Each request randomly queries one source, ensuring variety across Impressionist landscapes, atmospheric studies, and seasonal scenes. Tapping the title reveals the exact museum and curatorial notes behind the selection.

Weather data arrives via Open-Meteo's free, keyless API with hourly updates, while geocoding relies on Open-Meteo Geocoding plus Nominatim for reverse lookups. Every painting shown sits in the public domain, removing licensing friction. The result feels less like a gallery and more like a quiet companion that knows the sky.

The concept is simple but technically tidy — no accounts, no keys, no tracking. It demonstrates how lightweight APIs and open collections can create a delightful, zero-friction experience. Plein Air proves that sometimes the best software just gets out of the way.