21 CHARACTERISTICS of realistic painting

The realism it's a literary and artistic movement emerged in the mid-nineteenth century and coincides in time with the last liberal revolutions of the bourgeoisie and the industrial revolution. Realism will give voice to the social denunciation of the hypocrisy and conventions of the bourgeoisie and the thriving industrial society and life in the big cities.

In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we offer you the main characteristics of realistic painting.

The realistic painting is a response to the idealization of reality carried out by traditional painting, passing to take inspiration from everyday life. At that historical moment, in the mid-nineteenth century, artists became aware of the situation of the lower classes and the emergence of new left-wing political and labor movements.

Among the ideologues stands out Gustave Courbet who, in 1861, ruled that painting is an art of the concrete. An art that can only represent real things.

Realism originated in France, spreading from there to Great Britain, the rest of Europe and the United States. The first realistic works are literary with authors such as Balzac, while figures such as Courbet will stand out in the painting.

Realism developed between 1848 and 1891, with these phases:

Early realist painting (1830-1848)

It was born as a response to the disappointment generated by the failure of the different bourgeois revolutions. A movement that vindicates the social, linking itself to the second industrial revolution and technological advances such as the telegraph, the telephone and the railroad.

At that time, between 1848 and 1891, the following schools emerged:

• Naturalistic landscape painting. With Corot, Millet and the Barbizon School and the social realism with representatives like Courbet and Daumier, both in France.
• The Pre-Raphaelites in England.
• And, in Spain, in the retrospective realism.