REALISM in painting: FEATURES and featured PAINTERS [SUMMARY!]

The Realism is an artistic movement that arises Mid-nineteenth century in France, spreading to Great Britain and the United States shortly thereafter. With regard to painting, realism originates from the desire to denounce the consequences of Industrialization reflecting reality objectively and showing the human being surpassed by the job. The first modern movement in art for its rejection of traditionalism and presenting events from everyday life and merging art and life.

In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we offer you a summary of the realism in painting, its characteristics and painters highlights so you can recognize the key elements of this art style.

The realism in painting It has a series of characteristics that make it the first modern artistic movement. Thus, among its main stylistic features stand out:

1. Realistic painting emphasized the daily life of the middle and lower classes and the advances of the modern world, making them suitable subjects for art. Likewise, the progressive objectives of modernism were embraced, leaving aside traditional systems.
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2. Also, and following his concern for social, economic and political life, he showed less pleasant topics. For this he introduced darker, ocher and earthy palettes.
3. Although they participated in the Salons of the official Academy of Art, the realist painters also organized independent exhibitions to show his work.
4. Coinciding with the rise of the press and the median, the royalists became their own publicists and took advantage of the media echo to generate controversy and increase their fame.
5. One of the main architects of it was Gustave Courbet, author of the catalog of the 1855 exhibition, who coined the term realism, although it is not a structured movement with a clear unity.
6. It was also Courbet who pointed out how realism embodied the personal vision of the author's reality, leaving a record of the ideas and customs of the time. Thus, he points out how the purpose is to create a living art, something that he made clear in his work The burial at Ornans.
7. In general, painters portray serious characters, in gloomy environments, with hardly any joy, as a way of showing the oppressive and harsh environment in which the working classes lived. Thus, they will also be represented doing hard work and in full effort.

The techniques also put aside the traditional and are introduced new techniques considered as disrespectful. The news are:

• The contours of the figures.
• They lack perspective and scale.

The works of Courbert and Manet, later founder of the Impressionism, aroused criticism from experts for considering their unseemly works in front of the works of the great masters of painting. In paintings such as Manet's "Olympia", inspired by Titian's Venus de Urbino, critics considered it a crude imitation.

Since the middle of the 16th century, the Academy of Painting and Sculpture directed art production in France. Its presence and influence spread throughout Europe given the preeminence of the Gallic country. Thus, the Academy established artistic standards, trained artists and studios and organizing more or less regular exhibitions in its Hall.

One of its most recognizable forms was the historical painting, with themes taken from classical mythology, the Bible or literature. The most notable painters could paint this genre, being highly celebrated. Archaeological discoveries were also a source of inspiration, enshrining the style neoclassicist.

One of the responses to neoclassicism was the Romanticism, a movement that embraced the emotional and exoticism, exalting the irrational and the conflict between man and nature. And although romanticism already represented a first break with the principles of neoclassicism, it did not lead to a radical change in the institutions, art and society.

Between the leading artists of Realism we met with

• Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
• Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
• Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)
• Edouard Manet

The latter in its early stages, before founding Impressionism.

As we have already pointed out, Gustave Courbet Realism is one of the precursors, his work being a pioneer The burial of Ornans (1850), one of his best works, reflecting a burial in the most realistic way possible. Other famous paintings are Sieves (1859), The painter's workshop, real allegory, determining factor in a seven-year phase of my artistic (and moral) life, 1855 or The origin of the world, (1866).

XIX century it was really turbulent from the political and social point of view, a convulsion to which neoclassicism and romanticism turned their backs. Realism denounced this attitude and, in the 1940s, it was presented as a response to militarism, economic exploitation of the colonies, fierce industrialization and uncontrolled urbanization of the cities. For it stood on the side of science, morals, politics and positivism.

Another factor that influenced Realism was the birth of photography. And, although they did not usually work from photographs, they held it in high regard for showing reality with all its defects. Socially critical journalism and caricature also had a great influence on the development of Realism.