Realism (art movement)

Realismwas anartistic movementthat emerged in France in the 1840s, around the1848 Revolution.^[1]Realists rejectedRomanticism,which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century. Realism revolted against theexoticsubject matter and the exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. Instead, it sought to portray real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy. It did not avoid unpleasant or sordid aspects of life. The movement aimed to focus on unidealized subjects and events that were previously rejected in art work. Realist works depicted people of allsocial classesin situations that arise in ordinary life, and often reflected the changes brought by theIndustrialandCommercial Revolutions.Realism was primarily concerned with how things appeared to the eye, rather than containing ideal representations of the world.^{[citation needed]}The popularity of such "realistic" works grew with the introduction ofphotography—a new visual source that created a desire for people to produce representations which look objectively real.^{[citation needed]}

The Realists depicted everyday subjects and situations in contemporary settings, and attempted to depict individuals of all social classes in a similar manner. Gloomy earth toned palettes were used to ignore beauty and idealization that was typically found in art. This movement sparked controversy because it purposefully criticized social values and the upper classes, as well as examining the new values that came along with the industrial revolution. Realism is widely regarded as the beginning of the modern art movement due to the push to incorporate modern life and art together.^[2]Classical idealism and Romantic emotionalism and drama were avoided equally, and often sordid or untidy elements of subjects were not smoothed over or omitted. Social realism emphasizes the depiction of theworking class,and treating them with the same seriousness as other classes in art, but realism, as the avoidance of artificiality, in the treatment of human relations and emotions was also an aim of Realism. Treatments of subjects in a heroic or sentimental manner were equally rejected.^[3]

Realism as an art movement was led byGustave Courbetin France. It spread across Europe and was influential for the rest of the century and beyond, but as it became adopted into the mainstream of painting it becomes less common and useful as a term to define artistic style. After the arrival ofImpressionismand later movements which downgraded the importance of precise illusionistic brushwork, it often came to refer simply to the use of a more traditional and tighter painting style. It has been used for a number of later movements and trends in art, some involving careful illusionistic representation, such asPhotorealism,and others the depiction of "realist" subject matter in a social sense, or attempts at both.

Beginnings in France

Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet,1854. A Realist painting byGustave Courbet.

The Realist movement began in the mid-19th century as a reaction toRomanticismandHistory painting.In favor of depictions of 'real' life, the Realist painters used common laborers, and ordinary people in ordinary surroundings engaged in real activities as subjects for their works. The chief exponents of Realism wereGustave Courbet,Jean-François Millet,Honoré Daumier,andJean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.^[4]^[5]^[6]Jules Bastien-Lepageis closely associated with the beginning ofNaturalism,an artistic style that emerged from the later phase of the Realist movement and heralded the arrival ofImpressionism.^[7]

Realists used unprettified detail depicting the existence of ordinary contemporary life, coinciding in the contemporaneous naturalist literature ofÉmile Zola,Honoré de Balzac,andGustave Flaubert.^[8]

Courbet was the leading proponent of Realism and he challenged the popularhistory paintingthat was favored at the state-sponsored art academy. His groundbreaking paintingsA Burial at OrnansandThe Stonebreakersdepicted ordinary people from his native region. Both paintings were done on huge canvases that would typically be used for history paintings.^[8]Although Courbet's early works emulated the sophisticated manner of Old Masters such asRembrandtandTitian,after 1848 he adopted a boldly inelegant style inspired bypopular prints,shop signs, and other work of folk artisans.^[9]InThe Stonebreakers,his first painting to create a controversy, Courbet eschewed the pastoral tradition of representing human subjects in harmony with nature. Rather, he depicted two men juxtaposed against a charmless, stony roadside. The concealment of their faces emphasizes the dehumanizing nature of their monotonous, repetitive labor.^[9]

Gustave Courbet,A Burial At Ornans,1849
Jean-François Millet,The Gleaners,1857
Honoré Daumier,The Third Class Carriage,1862–1864
Gustave Courbet,The Stone Breakers,1849
Gustave Courbet,After Dinner at Ornans,1849
Jean-François Millet,The Sower,1850
Gustave Courbet,Le Sommeil(Sleep), 1866, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot,Young Girl Reading,1868,National Gallery of Art^[10]
Édouard Manet,Breakfast in the Studio (the Black Jacket),New Pinakothek,Munich, Germany,1868
Departing Cranes,Poland,byJózef Chełmoński,National Museum in Kraków,1871
Jean-François Millet,A Norman Milkmaid at Gréville,1871
Jules Bastien-Lepage,October,1878,National Gallery of Victoria
Jules Breton,The Song of the Lark,1884
Jules Breton,The End of the Working Day,1886–87

Beyond France

Ilya Repin,Barge Haulers on the Volga,1870–73

The French Realist movement had stylistic and ideological equivalents in all other Western countries, developing somewhat later. The Realist movement in France was characterized by a spirit of rebellion against powerful official support for history painting. In countries where institutional support of history painting was less dominant, the transition from existing traditions ofgenre paintingto Realism presented no such schism.^[9]An important Realist movement beyond France was thePeredvizhnikiorWanderersgroup in Russia who formed in the 1860s and organized exhibitions from 1871 included many realists such as genre artistVasily Perov,landscapeartistsIvan Shishkin,Alexei Savrasov,andArkhip Kuindzhi,portraitistIvan Kramskoy,war artist Vasily Vereshchagin,historical artistVasily Surikovand, especially,Ilya Repin,who is considered by many to be the most renowned Russian artist of the 19th century.^[11]

Courbet's influence was felt most strongly in Germany, where prominent realists includedAdolph Menzel,Wilhelm Leibl,Wilhelm Trübner,andMax Liebermann.Leibl and several other young German painters met Courbet in 1869 when he visited Munich to exhibit his works and demonstrate his manner of painting from nature.^[12]In Italy the artists of theMacchiaioligroup painted Realist scenes of rural and urban life. TheHague Schoolwere Realists in the Netherlands whose style and subject matter strongly influenced the early works ofVincent van Gogh.^[9]In Britain artists such as the AmericanJames Abbott McNeill Whistler,as well as English artistsFord Madox Brown,Hubert von HerkomerandLuke Fildeshad great success with realist paintings dealing with social issues and depictions of the "real" world.

In the United States,Winslow HomerandThomas Eakinswere important Realists and forerunners of theAshcan School,an early-20th-century art movement largely based inNew York City.The Ashcan School included such artists asGeorge BellowsandRobert Henri,and helped to defineAmerican realismin its tendency to depict the daily life of poorer members of society.

Later on in America, the term realism took on various new definitions and adaptations once the movement hit the U.S.Surrealismandmagical realismdeveloped out of the French realist movement in the 1930s, and in the 1950snew realismdeveloped. This sub-movement considered art to exist as a thing in itself opposed to representations of the real world. In modern-day America, realism art is generally regarded as anything that does not fall into abstract art, therefore including mostly art that depicts realities.^{[citation needed]}