HISTORY OF WESTERN ART II

REALISM
Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject
matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, or implausible, exotic,
and supernatural elements.
Realism was an artistic movement that began in France in the 1840s, after the 1848
Revolution. Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and the exaggerated emotionalism
and drama of the Romantic movement.

SUMMARY
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.

Characteristics
Realism presents the idea that an artist’s highest accomplishment is to faithfully represent life as
it happens around him. While each art form has its own way of exploring the realist aesthetic,
they each incorporate the same basic principles and characteristics.
Photographic Accuracy: Realism sought to capture everyday life in photographic accuracy,
down to the correct clothing, setting and quality of light.
Absolute Objective: This characteristic emerged from a philosophy that the natural world
contained its own eloquence and symbolism without the artist needing to superimpose their own
ideas upon it.
Timing & Lighting: In painting as well as in theater and film, realism artists use source lighting
to recreate a scene’s natural lighting and time of day.
Emphasis on everyday life: Where previous artists often portrayed subjects that were biblical,
heroic, royal or mythological, realists preferred to capture the experience of the lower class.

Famous Artist
Gaustave Courbet

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Gustave Courbet was French Painter born in the city of Ornans, on June 10, 1819. Courbet was
considered one of the most radical of all nineteenth-century painters and one of the fathers of
modern art. Gustave Courbet was influential in many regards. First, he broke the mold of
convention with his revolutionary ideas and techniques. This, in turn, lead to the creation of a
new art movement, that of Realism. Courbet rebelled against the Romantic painting of his day,
turning to everyday events for his subject matter.

The Stone Breakers

Here, two figures labor to break and remove stone from a road that is being built. In our age of
powerful jackhammers and bulldozers, such work is reserved as punishment for chain-gangs

Burial at Ornans (10ft * 20ft)

Burial at Ornans is one of Courbet’s most significant paintings, and captures the funeral of his
grand uncle which was held in September 1848. In Burial at Ornans, Courbet used the real

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people who attended the burial. The resulting depiction is a realistic display of them, and of
existence in Ornans.

Bonjour (129 x 149 cm)

Bonjour Monsieur Courbet, of 1854, Courbet has painted himself on the right side. The painting
is traditionally interpreted as Courbet greeted by his patron Alfred Bruyas, his servant Calas, and
his dog while traveling to Montpellier.

Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, French painter, noted primarily for his landscapes, who inspired
and to some extent anticipated the landscape painting of the Impressionists. His oil sketches,
remarkable for their technical freedom and clear color, have come to be as highly regarded as the
finished pictures that were based upon them.

Ruins of the Château de Pierrefonds

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"Ruins of the Château de Pierrefonds" depicts a small town in northern France with a medieval
castle fallen into ruins. By the time Corot reworked this painting in 1866/67, the Château
de Pierrefonds was no longer a ruin. At the request of Napoleon III, it was restored in the late
1850s by the architect Viollet-le-Duc.

Honore Davmier
Honoré-Victorin Daumier, prolific French caricaturist, painter, and sculptor especially renowned
for his cartoons and drawings satirizing 19th-century French politics and society. His paintings,
though hardly known during his lifetime, helped introduce techniques of Impressionism into
modern art

The Third Class Carriage

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The Third Class Carriage is an oil painting produced between 1862 and 1864 by French painter
Honore Daumier. Honore Daumier’s paintings was influenced by rail traveling theme and
painted many images on similar theme since 1840’s. During 1860s, and as of now too, third class
railway carriages were for only those people who couldn’t afford first or second class tickets.

Caricatures

Eduard Manet
Édouard Manet, French painter who broke new ground by defying traditional techniques of
representation and by choosing subjects from the events and circumstances of his own time. He
was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, and a pivotal figure in the transition
from Realism to Impressionism.

Lunch on the Grass

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He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, and a pivotal figure in the
transition from Realism to Impressionism. The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia engendered
great controversy, and served as rallying points for the young painters who would later launch
the Impressionist movement

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