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.