Pochades-or not

Craster Concrete IV

This is a pochade. It fits my definition of the term  because it is a small painting.In art history you particularly come across the term pochade with reference to those little panels which Seurat painted in connection with the Bathers and the Grande Jatte. Monet uses he term pochade in his letters of the 1870s and 1880s.His idea of a pochade is always a painting larger than a Seurat panel.According to John House*, Monet's pochades can measure as much as 73X92 cms in the case of the very well known painting of La Grenouillère in the National Gallery, London.Perhaps this is what Monet would have called a large pochade-he does use the term.And he also uses the term esquisse-almost interchangeably.But it jars considerably when I see someone referring to pochades by Constable-with reference to the same-size sketches for his six-footers.But this is what you find on the very inadequate entry on Wikipedia. 

No, the word is French and must relate to poche=pocket. The work is small, so it could fit in your pocket.

There is a group on Flickr devoted to pochades and there you can see works by Tadeusz Deregowski who does tiny pochades which must be about the size of a hand.He makes an individual box for each work.You can see his website here.They are really enjoyable and very freely painted.A good pochade will be small but these do not look like small paintings.

*Monet: Nature into Art"by John House;Yale,1986. See especially chapter 6.