Realism
Realism was an art movement that emerged in France in the 1840s. Realist artists aimed to represent subjects with objective naturalism rather than idealized forms. They portrayed everyday life, working people, and grittier realities usually ignored in the arts. Realism opposed the exotic historical and mythological subjects of Romanticism and Neoclassicism in favor of down-to-earth scenes accessible to a wider public.
Key artists included Gustave Courbet, Honore Daumier, and Jean-Francois Millet. Courbet’s A Burial at Ornans (1849-50) demonstrated Realism’s choice of ordinary subjects on a large scale once reserved for religious, historical or allegorical works. Daumier’s satirical caricatures exposed the harsh conditions of the working class. Millet’s The Gleaners (1857) portrayed rural labor with dignity and sobriety.
Realism was inspired by Baudelaire’s call for artists to capture the “heroism of modern life”. It represented politically progressive responses to social inequities in mid-19th century France. The movement gained acceptance in progressive Salons and shaped later Naturalism, but was controversial for its rejection of academic conventions and focus on unidealized subjects. Still, Realism spurred modern art’s engagement with social realities and the lives of ordinary people.
At its best, Realism conveyed human truths through sober and unvarnished observation of the real world. Realist works gave visual form to progressive social ideals that humanized groups largely unseen in the arts. They demonstrated how artistic vision could shape understanding of human experience across class – using sober craft and observation to ennoble even the most humble subjects and lives ordinarily deemed unsuitable for art.
Though now a historical movement, Realism produced striking works that revealed the artistic richness of daily life while expanding the moral and social purview of art. Realist painters aimed to awaken, move and uplift through visionary works that turned the eye of imagination away from the pleasures of mythology or fantasy alone to the world before us – epic not in wars and gods but in human labor, rest or play by which all lives are shaped and made significant or humble, harsh or fair day after day.
Artists Names
Famous Artists
> Alfred Sisley
> Camille Pissarro
> Caravaggio
> Claude Monet
> Diego Velázquez
> Edgar Degas
> Édouard Manet
> Eugène Delacroix
> Francisco de Goya
> Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
> Isaac Levitan
> Ivan Shishkin
> Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
> Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
> John Singer Sargent
> John William Waterhouse
> Joseph Mallord William Turner
> Lawrence Alma-Tadema
> Leonardo da Vinci
> Michelangelo
> Paul Cézanne
> Paul Gauguin
> Peter Paul Rubens
> Pierre-Auguste Renoir
> Raphael Sanzio
> Rembrandt Van Rijn
> Vincent van Gogh
> William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Art Subjects
>Abstract Oil Painting
>African Oil Painting
>Angel Oil Painting
>Animal Oil Painting
>Architecture Oil Painting
>Beach Oil Painting
>Bird Oil Painting
>Black and White Oil Painting
>Boat Oil Painting
>Buddha Oil Painting
>Bunny Oil Painting
>Cartoon Oil Painting
>Cat Oil Painting
>Cityscape Oil Painting
>Coastal Oil Painting
>Contemporary Oil Painting
>Daisy Oil Painting
>Dog Oil Painting
>Eagle Oil Painting
>Fantasy Oil Painting
>Figure Oil Painting
>Floral Oil Painting
>Forest Oil Painting
>Fruit Oil Painting
>Genre Works
>Horse Oil Painting
>Hunting Scenes Oil Painting
>Impressionist Oil Painting
>Jesus Oil Painting
>Landscape Oil Painting
>Modern Oil Paintings
>Mountain Oil Painting
>Music Oil Painting
>Nature Oil Painting
>Nude Oil Painting
>Pet Portrait Oil Painting
>Realistic Oil Painting
>Religious Oil Painting
>Scenery Oil Painting
>Seascape Oil Painting
>Season Oil Painting
>Sport Oil Painting
>Still Life Oil Painting
>Sunset Oil Painting
>Textured Oil Painting
>Tree Oil Painting
>War Oil Painting
>Wildlife Oil Painting
Art Movment
>Abstract Expressionism
>Academic Classicism
>Aestheticsm
>Art Deco
>Art Nouveau
>Barbizon School
>Baroque Art
>Byzantine Art
>Cubism
>Expressionism
>Fauvism
>Hudson River School
>Impressionism
>Mannerism
>Gothic Art
>Modernism
>Nabis
>Neoclassicism
>Neo-Impressionism
>Orientalism
>Pointillism
>Pop Art
>Post Impressionism
>Pre-Raphaelites
>Primitivism
>Realism
>Renaissance
>Rococo
>Romanticism
>Suprematism
>Surrealism
>Symbolism
>Tonalism
>Victorian Classicism
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