Realism
Started: 1840s
Ended: 1880s
KEY ARTISTS
 | Gustave Courbet Quick View  Artist Page |
| Gustave Courbet |  |
| Gustave Courbet was a French painter and chief figure in the Realist movement of the mid-nineteenth century. His paintings often contained an emotional bleakness, and were praised for their precision and use of light. Along with Delacroix, Courbet was a key influence on the Impressionists. Art Story: Gustave Courbet Artist Page | ||
 | Jean-François Millet Quick View Artist Page |
| Jean-François Millet | |
| Millet was the Realist co-founder of the Barbizon School near Paris. He is especially known for his depictions rural life and peasant labor that had a large influence on later modernists. Art Story: Jean-François Millet Artist Page | ||
 | Édouard Manet Quick View Artist Page |
| Édouard Manet | |
| Édouard Manet was a French painter and a prominent figure in the mid-nineteenth-century Realist movement of French art. Manet's paintings are considered among the first works of art in the modern era, due to his rough painting style and absence of idealism in his figures. Manet was a close friend of and major influence on younger artists who founded Impressionism such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Art Story: Édouard Manet Artist Page | ||
 | James Whistler Quick View Artist Page |
| James Whistler | |
| James Whistler was a nineteenth-century American expatriate artist. Educated in France and later based in London, Whistler was a famous proponent of art-for-art's-sake, and an esteemed practictioner of tonal harmony in his canvases, often characterized by his masterful use of blacks and greys, as seen in his most famous work, Whistler's Mother (1871). Whistler was also known as an American Impressionist, and in 1874 he famously turned down an invitation from Degas to exhibit his work with the French Impressionists. Art Story: James Whistler Artist Page | ||
 | John Singer Sargent Quick View Artist Page |
| John Singer Sargent | |
| John Singer Sargent was the premiere portraitist of his generation, well-known for his depictions of high society figures in Paris, London, and New York. He updated a centuries-old tradition in order to capture his sitters' character and even reputation. Art Story: John Singer Sargent Artist Page | ||
 | Thomas Eakins Quick View Artist Page |
| Thomas Eakins | |
| Thomas Eakins was an American painter, photographer, sculptor, and teacher. Renowned as an influential Realist painter, his many portraits famously depicted the streets, parlors, natural scenery and citizens of his native Philadelphia. Eakins was known as a master of light, shadow and movement, and for capturing simple scenes that evoked complex themes. Art Story: Thomas Eakins Artist Page | ||
"It is not a question, here, of searching for an 'absolute' of beauty. The artist is neither painting history nor his soul... And it is because of this that he should neither be judged as a moralist nor as a literary man. He should be judged simply as a painter."
Summary of Realism
Though never a coherent group, Realism is recognized as the first modern movement in art, which rejected traditional forms of art, literature, and social organization as outmoded in the wake of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Beginning in France in the 1840s, Realism revolutionized painting, expanding conceptions of what constituted art. Working in a chaotic era marked by revolution and widespread social change, Realist painters replaced the idealistic images and literary conceits of traditional art with real-life events, giving the margins of society similar weight to grand history paintings and allegories. Their choice to bring everyday life into their canvases was an early manifestation of the avant-garde desire to merge art and life, and their rejection of pictorial techniques, like perspective, prefigured the many 20th-century definitions and redefinitions of modernism.
Key Ideas
Gustave Courbet said he painted his hometown's "mayor, who weighs 400, the parish priest, the justice of the peace, the cross bearer, the notary Marlet, the assistant mayor, my friends, my father, the choirboys, the grave digger, two old revolutionaries" to depict the funeral of his great-uncle in his Burial at Ornans (1849-51) - thus painting his reality. When exhibited the painting created such an uproar and launched Realism, that the artist said later, "Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of Romanticism."
Important Art and Artists of Realism | |
  | Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834 (1834)Artist: Honoré Daumier Artwork description & Analysis: Even before Realism began as a coherent trend in the 1840s, Daumier's prints and caricatures engaged with the social injustices that would color the works of Courbet and others. Insurrection against the monarchy of Louis Philippe I reached a boiling point in April 1834, and a police officer was killed during a riot in a working-class neighborhood. In retaliation, government forces brutally massacred the residents of the building where the killer was believed to be hiding. In Rue Transnonain, Daumier revealed government excess with an emotionally provocative image showing the aftermath of the government's grossly disproportionate reaction, focused on the corpse of an unarmed civilian lying atop the body of his dead child. This topical, straight-from-the-headlines print denouncing the monarchy participates in Realism's assault on traditional power structures. Lithograph on paper - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 | A Burial at Ornans (1849-50)Artist: Gustave Courbet Artwork description & Analysis: With A Burial at Ornans, Courbet made his name synonymous with the young Realist movement. By depicting a simple rural funeral service in the town of his birth, Courbet accomplished several things. First, he made a painting of a mundane topic with unknown people (each attendee is given a personalized portrait) on a scale traditionally reserved for history painting. Second, he eschewed any spiritual value beyond the service; the painting, often compared to El Greco's Burial of Count Orgaz (1586), leaves out El Greco's depiction of Christ and the heavens. Third, Courbet's gritty depiction showed the fashionable Salon-goers of Paris their new political equals in the country, as the 1848 Revolution had established universal male suffrage. Artistically, Courbet legendarily stated, "A Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of Romanticism," opening up a new visual style for an increasingly modern world. Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay |
 | The Stone Breakers (1849-50)Artist: Gustave Courbet Artwork description & Analysis: At the same Salon of 1850-51 where he made waves with A Burial at Ornans, Courbet also exhibited The Stone Breakers. In the painting, which shows two workers, one young, one old, Courbet presented both a Realist snapshot of everyday life and an allegory on the nature of poverty. While the image was inspired by a scene of two men creating gravel for roads, one of the least-paying, most backbreaking jobs imaginable, Courbet rendered his figures faceless as to make them anonymous stand-ins for the lowest orders of French society. More attention is given to their dirty, tattered work clothes, their strong, weathered hands, and their relationship to the land than to their recognizability. They are, however, monumental in size and shown with a quiet dignity befitting their willingness to do the unseen, unsung labor upon which modern life was built. Oil on canvas - Destroyed by bombing in Dresden during World War II |
More Realism Artwork and Analysis:
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First published on 21 Mar 2015. Updated and modified regularly. 
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