Realism was anartistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s.[1] Realists rejectedRomanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century.[2] The artistGustave Courbet, the original proponent of Realism, sought to portray real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy, not avoiding unpleasant or sordid aspects of life.[3] Realism revolted against theexotic subject matter, exaggerated emotionalism, and the drama of the Romantic movement, often focusing on unidealized subjects and events that were previously rejected in artwork.[2] Realist works depicted people of allsocial classes in situations that arise in ordinary life, and often reflected the changes brought by theIndustrial andCommercial Revolutions. Realism was primarily concerned with how things appeared to the eye, rather than containing ideal representations of the world.[2] Realism spread to other countries, maintaining similar principles with some differences arising from the artistic background of the individual countries and artists.[4]
Scholars theorize that Realism was influenced by multiple intersecting societal conditions in the mid-1800s, including the suffrage movement, urban immigration, social class tensions, and economic difficulties caused by the Industrial and Commercial Revolutions.[5][6] In 1848-49, there were multiple uprisings in Europe including in France, the German states, the Italian states, Hungary, and Poland.[5] Courbet's first Realist works in 1849 and later artworks often depicted poor and working-class peoples, which were not the focus of artists previously, as Romantic art portrayed a beautiful and idealized world.[5] This social component of Realism is demonstrated in varying degrees across Realism in different countries.[4][7]
The Realist movement began in the mid-19th century as a reaction toRomanticism andHistory painting.[7] 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.[7] The chief exponents of Realism in France wereGustave Courbet,Jean-François Millet,Honoré Daumier, andJean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.[8][9][10]Jules Bastien-Lepage is closely associated with the beginning ofNaturalism, an artistic style that emerged from the later phase of the Realist movement and heralded the arrival ofImpressionism.[11] The Realism art movement coincided with the naturalist literature movement ofÉmile Zola,Honoré de Balzac, andGustave Flaubert.[12]
Courbet was the leading proponent of Realism and he challenged the popularhistory painting that was favored at the state-sponsored art academy.[7] His paintingsA Burial at Ornans andThe Stonebreakers depict ordinary people and were done on huge canvases that would typically be used for history paintings.[13] Although Courbet's early works emulated the sophisticated manner of Old Masters such asRembrandt andTitian, after 1848 he adopted a boldly inelegant style inspired bypopular prints, shop signs, and other work of folk artisans.[14] InThe Stonebreakers, his first painting to create a controversy, Courbet eschewed the pastoral tradition of representing human subjects in harmony with nature.[14] 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.[14]
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![Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Young Girl Reading, 1868, National Gallery of Art[15]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aYoung_Girl_Reading_by_Jean-Baptiste-Camille_Corot_c1868.jpg)
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The French Realist movement had stylistic and ideological equivalents in other Western countries, developing somewhat later.[4] The Realist movement in France was characterized by a spirit of rebellion against powerful official support for history painting and the desire to paint the world as it really is instead of an idealized version.[2] In countries where institutional support of history painting was less dominant, the transition from existing traditions ofgenre painting to Realism presented no such schism.[4] The Realist art movement spread as French Realist paintings were exhibited in other European countries and foreign artists were exposed to Realism while studying and traveling in European art centers like Paris and Munich.[16]
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.[17][18] Leibl then spent a year in Paris before returning to Munich and formed the Leibl Circle in 1871 to focus on realism in painting with other artists from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.[18][19] Much of Leibl's body of work is paintings of ordinary people, includingThree Women in Church (1881).
Adolf Menzel is another prominent Realist artist, beginning as a lithographer in Berlin and teaching himself to paint in the 1840s.[20][21] Over his career, Menzel painted a variety of subjects, including nature, portraits, and ballrooms filled with people.[20][21] Two of his most famous works includeLaying Out the March Dead (1848), depicting the civilian coffins after the March Revolution in Berlin, and an industrial factory scene,The Iron Rolling Mill (1872–75).
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Realism in Russia arose in the 1850s and 1860s.[20] Due to dissatisfaction with the Academy and the Czar, many art students left the school and began traveling exhibitions, painting peasants and rural life in the countryside, becoming known as thePeredvizhniki (the Travelers, Wanderers, Itinerants).[4][22] Some of these Travelers include genre artistVasily Perov,landscape artistsIvan Shishkin,Alexei Savrasov, andArkhip Kuindzhi, portraitistIvan Kramskoy, and historical artistVasily Surikov.[23] Some of the most well-known of the Russian Realists areIlya Repin, for his paintings of peasants likeBarge Haulers on the Volga (1870–73) and themes of revolution, andVassili Vereschagin, for this art depicting warfare and his travels in India.[20][24][25]
In Italy, theMacchiaioli artist group formed between 1853 and 1860, influenced by the Realism art style when some of the members traveled to Paris.[26] The Macchiaioli rejected the formalities of the Florentine Accademia di Belle Arti, instead painting Realist scenes of rural and urban life.[27] When not painting in the Tuscan countryside, some members spent time in Florence and at theCaffé Michelangiolo, a common meeting place for thinkers and artists in the mid-19th century.[26][27] The Macchiaioli also were involved with the Italian unification movement, theRisorgimento.[26][27]
Originally called theEffettisti (effet: French for light effects), for their attention to light and shading in painting, they adopted their name after a critic called themmacchia, meaning "spot" and "stain."[27] Though considered Realist, their art style has drawn comparisons to the brightness ofRomanticism and the attention to light as with theImpressionists.[26] The Macchiaioli's paintings include an array of rural landscapes and peasants, urban scenes and laborers, and battle paintings. Some of the Macchiaioli artists includeGiovanni Fattori,Serafino De Tivoli,Silvestro Lega, andTelemaco Signorini.[26]
The Hague School was a group of Realist artists based in The Hague, Netherlands between 1860 and 1900, influenced by the Barbizon School of landscapes paintings, French naturalism and realism, and themes from the 17th century Dutch masters.[20][28][29] It's also nicknamed the 'Grey School' for heavy use of grey tones in many of their paintings.[28] Similarly to the French Realists, they disregarded Romanticism and objectively painted the ordinary, though with less focus on human plights.[20]
Willem Roelofs andAnton Mauve painted rural landscapes,Hendrick Willem Mesdag is known for seascapes and fishing boats, andJacob Maris painted villages and waterways.[29] Of all the work in the Hague School, scholars considerJozef Israëls's Realist paintings to be the most comparable to Gustave Courbet's and Jean-Francois Millet's work, often depicting peasants and laboring.[29]Vincent Van Gogh was instructed by Mauve and originally painted in the Realist style until he visited Paris in 1886 and was influenced byImpressionist artworks.[20]
Hubert von Herkomer,Luke Fildes, andFrank Holl comprised the unofficial British social realism school starting in the 1870s.[30] They worked together atThe Graphic from 1872-1876, producing woodcut images for the illustrated newspaper, drawing attention to social issues and poverty in the United Kingdom.[30][31] The German-born Herkomer admired Menzel's woodcut prints and artwork, which show influence in Herkomer's prints forThe Graphic.[31] After their early career in prints, Herkomer, Fildes, and Holl moved to paintings, portraying objective depictions of poor and laboring people while also conversely, painting portraits for British nobility.[31][32] Active a decade earlier,Frederick Walker had a similar trajectory from printing to Realist painting and was influential on Herkomer's work and other British artists in the later 19th century.[33][31]
Despite being an original tenant of thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, modern scholars are unconvinced that they can be called Realists.[34] Like the French and Russian Realists, the Pre-Raphaelites rejected the academy in the mid-1800s and sought to objectively portray nature, but it's argued their artwork appears more emotional and reminiscent of Romanticism and the Nazarene movement.[35] Later in his career, the Pre-RaphaeliteFord Maddox Brown's work was more traditionally Realist, as exemplified inWork (1855, 1863) andThe Last of England (1852-5).[34]
Realism influenced American artists studying in Paris and Munich in the 1860s and 1870s.[19] Two early American Realists,Winslow Homer andThomas Eakins, spent time in Paris in 1867 and 1866–69, respectively.[36] Homer's initial artwork consisted of Civil War camp and peasant paintings in the Realist style, though he transitioned to a more Romantic style later in life, depicting coastal cities and nature.[36][37][38] Eakins worked on Realist style portraits and outside scenes, especially rowers on the water.[39] American artists studying at theAcademy of Fine Arts in Munich in the 1870s were taught byKarl von Piloty, who was proponent of Realism, but applied to history painting.[19] These students includedFrank Duveneck,William Merritt Chase, andFrank Currier, who were also members of the Realist Leibl Circle.[18]
A later wave of American Realism occurred with theAshcan School in New York City in the 1890s, depicting urban scenes and laborers in their artwork.[36][40] Their leader,Robert Henri, attended thePennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in 1886, where the teaching was heavily influenced by Thomas Eakins' Realist style, though Eakins was forced to resign just prior to Henri starting.[36] After three years in Paris, he returned to the US and settled in New York, actively working against the mainstream academy and the Impressionist art movement.[36][41] Other Realist members of the group includeJohn Sloan,William Glackens,Everett Shinn, andGeorge Luks.[36] Similarly to Menzel and the British social Realists, all four also began their careers as newspaper print illustrators.[36]
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Boime, Albert. (2004).Art in an Age of Counterrevolution, 1815-1848. The University of Chicago Press.
Boime, Albert. (2007).Art in an Age of Civil Struggle, 1848-1871. The University of Chicago Press.
Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate. (2012).Nineteenth-Century European Art. Third Edition. Prentice Hall.
Eisenman, Stephen F., ed. (2011).Nineteenth Century Art, A Critical History. Thames & Hudson.
Manstein, Marianne von, and Bernhard von Waldkirch. (2019).The Art of Seeing: Wilhelm Leibl. Hirmer Publishers.
Slayton, Robert A. (2017).Beauty in the City: The Ashcan School. State University of New York Press.
Werner, Marcia. (2005).Pre-Raphaelite Painting and Nineteenth Century Realism. Cambridge University Press.
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