Art History  •  Movements and techniques

Realism Art and Style: Everything You Need to Know

Realism art is traditionally used to describe the 19th century movement that used everyday scenes and people as subject matter, depicting them in a naturalistic style. Today the term is also used to describe works of art that are painted so realistically that they resemble a photograph.

Realism Art: Origins in 19th Century France

Realism as an artistic movement first began in France in the early 1850s after the revolution. The movement began as a response to and rejection of Romanticism, the prevalent artistic and literary movement of the time. Romanticism, comparatively, was all about exotic subject matter, exaggerated emotions and intensified drama, whereas Realism art intended to portray contemporary life as it truly was. Realism used normal people from all social classes in contemporary, everyday, situations as subject matter. Artists tried to represent these people in a truthful and accurate way, not glossing over the more unpleasant aspects of life. Realism also focused on broader themes such as the social climate brought about by the Industrial Revolution.

Important Artists of The Realism Movement

One of art history’s most celebrated Realism artists is Jean-François Millet. His impressive Realist canvas, The Gleaners, depicts three working-class woman bent over, tending to the land. Other key figures of the French Realism movement were Honoré Daumier, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Jules Bastien-Lepage. However, the true pioneer of Realism was undoubtedly the French painter Gustave Courbet, whose best known work, ‘A Burial at Ornans’, now hangs in the Musée D’Orsay in Paris.

 Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857
Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857

Courbet’s paintings challenged the tradition of the History painting and therefore, the established hierarchy of painting established by the Academy. He painted real working people from his region on enormous canvases usually reserved for the lofty figures from classical history, and in doing so, elevated these ordinary people to the same status. While his earlier style is somber and borrowed techniques from the Old Masters in terms of precision and sophistication, Courbet’s later work went one step further in rejecting Romanticism. In his 1849 painting, The Stonebreakers, he subverts the traditional notion of man and nature’s harmonious relationship, choosing to depict the grueling and repetitive tasks done by laborers in this unforgiving natural environment.

The Spread of Realism Art Throughout Europe and Beyond

The success of Realist art started in France but rapidly spread to the rest of Europe and became highly influential to the art movements that superseded it. While the movement had clear equivalents in other European countries in terms of both style and ideology, it did not cause the same kind of controversy as it had done in France. Realism had been born out of an inherent social defiance of institutionalized traditions of painting, where support for history and genre painting was implemented by state-sponsored art academies. In other European cultural hubs this national endorsement of genre painting was far less prevalent, and so embracing this new Realist style was not as radical.

James Abbot McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, 1871). Popularly known as Whistler's Mother.
James Abbot McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, 1871). Popularly known as Whistler’s Mother.

The movement was popular in Germany and advocated by painters such as Adolph Menzel, Wilhelm Leibl and Max Liebermann. Celebrated artists such as the American James Abbot McNeill Whistler and British painter Ford Maddox Brown painted socially realist canvases that depicted the plight of ordinary people living in the real world. The 20th century Ashcan School, a group of American Realist painters living predominantly in New York City, was hugely inspired by the French Realism of the previous century and in turn provided the foundations for American Realism and the depiction of daily life among the poorer social classes.

The Many Faces of Realism Art Today

Around the middle of the 20th century, the term ‘Realism’ was adopted by mainstream culture to refer to paintings that are intensely realistic in style and employ intricate illusory brushwork to create compositions that resemble photographs. After Impressionism became a popular movement which favored a quick, evocative style of painting, Realism became a term used to define paintings with a more restrained and traditional style. Thus today, the term realism can be used correctly in several instances to describe both technique, style, and content as well as the 19th century movement from whence the term originated.

Browse Realism art by some of today’s best up and coming artists on Singulart.

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