REALISM PAINTING: CHARACTERISTICS, TECHNIQUES AND AUTHORS - ART - 2025

The realistic painting replaces the idealistic images of traditional art by real - life events, giving priority to portray everyday life. This is due to their social and ideological sensitivity towards the lower classes and left movements.

It is Gustave Courbet who lays the foundations in 1861, when he says that "painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things."

The Stonebreakers (1849), by Gustave Courbet

Realism is an artistic movement that originated in France, towards the middle of the 19th century, to also spread throughout Great Britain and later, the United States. It begins precisely after the revolution that overthrew the monarch Luis Felipe in 1848 It develops during the Second Empire under Napoleon III and ends towards the end of the 19th century.

In its beginnings this movement takes place in literature with Campfleury (Jules François Félix Husson); Balzac and Luis Edmond Duranty. And also in painting, whose greatest exponent was Gustave Courbet.

Features of realistic painting

In order to define its characteristics, it must be taken into account that its main objective is, as Courbet states, to take the reality of the world that surrounds it. For this reason, he claims to capture customs, ideas and aspects of the time, highlighting his personal vision of reality.

Furthermore, in the preamble to the catalog of the 1855 exhibition, he declares that "you have to know to do" and that its purpose is to produce "living art."

It is Gustave Courbet who coined the term realism by giving that name to the building that is built for the aforementioned exhibition: "Pavilion of Realism." However within this movement there is no complete unity. There are many painters considered within it but it is not a structured or homogeneous movement.

However, the following can be mentioned as some of its peculiarities:

-Representation of the daily reality of the lower and middle class population of society. An example of this is "The Gleaners" by Jean-François Millet.

-Absence of joy, people look serious and that is why they are represented with dark colors. In this way the paintings become gloomy as a means of demonstrating the plight of the workers. An oil that clearly represents him is “Third Class Carriage” by Honoré Daumier.

-Image of urban, rural and poor workers shown in hunched postures, struggling to perform hard manual labor. This can be seen in Gustave Courbet's “The Stone Breakers”.

-Challenge of social class distinctions present, for example, in "Young Ladies of the Village." There are very close young women representing the emerging rural environment and the class of the poor peasant who accepts their charity.

Techniques used

For critics of the time, both Courbet's painting and that of his contemporaries of realism, did not respect traditional techniques. For them it was a conflictive and disrespectful art of the practices in force until that moment.

Among those techniques that shocked the artistic specialists of the time, are:

-Strengthen the contours of the figures a lot as in Courbet's first work, “The Stone Breakers”, which gives a “flat” canvas.

-Lack of perspective and denial of scale as occurs in another Courbet work "Young Ladies of the Village" and in "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" by Édouard Manet.

In the case of Manet's painting, critics of the time exploded with indignation when compared to the works of Marcantonio Raimondi and Giorgione. So they viewed Manet's treatment as indecent in front of the Old Masters.

The same happened with "Olympia" based on "Venus de Urbino" by Titian, which they considered contoured, flat, raw and crude.

However, these manipulations in both Manet, who later founded Impressionism, and Courbet, gave realism painting the ability to reveal the canvas as a two-dimensional support that is creatively covered with pigment. And this has been the possibility that future artists could move away from naturalism.

Authors and outstanding works

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)

Creator of this movement, in addition to his most recognized works "The Stone Breakers" and "Young Ladies of the Village", there is another pioneer called "A Burial at Ornans".

But when this work and "The Painter's Studio" were rejected by the jury of the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855, he withdrew them and founded his Pavilion of Realism.

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)

He painted scenes of rural life such as "Sheep Shearing Beneath a Tree." In this way he paid tribute to the French population migrating from rural areas to industrialized cities.

Another of his works is "The Gleaners", which shows the rural poverty of that time. And in “Woman with a Raike” she gives her figures a sculptural presence similar to the art of Michelangelo and Nicolas Poussin.

Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)

This painter stands out for illustrating the socioeconomic differences in the urban area. It does this through the experience of train travel in first, second and third class compartments.

In "The First-Class Carriage" there is no physical contact between the four figures. While in "The Third-Class Carriage" there is a crowd of women and men. Highlighting among them a young mother and her sleeping child showing the daily difficulties of an apparently fatherless family.

Daumier also excelled in graphic works for magazines such as "La Caricature" and "Le Charivari". In them he satirized the manners of the bourgeoisie and government officials.

It is also known "Rue Transnonain", published on April 15, 1834 in the Magazine Association Mensuelle. There the violent repression of a workers' demonstration is shown. Although Daumier was not present, he manages to describe the brutality of the Louis-Philippe government.

Outside of France the following can be mentioned:

England

It has the group of painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and those of Ford Madox Brown. Those of the Newlyn school are also recognized as realistic (7).

U.S

Thomas Eakins with his work "The Gross Clinic" and Winslow Homer with "Snap the Whip" (8).

References

1. Musée d'Orsay. (2006). "Realism". Retrieved May 30, 2018 from musee-orsay.fr.
2. Ross Finocchio. (October 2004). "Nineteenth-Century French Realism". Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved May 30, 2018 from metmuseum.org.
3. Musée d'Orsay. (2006). "Realism". Retrieved May 30, 2018 from musee-orsay.fr.
4. Identify this Art. “Realism Art Movement” in “Art Movements & Styles”. Retrieved May 30, 2018 from identifythisart.com.
5. The Art Story, Moderns Art Insight. "Realism". Retrieved May 30, 2018 from theartstory.org.
6. Joaquín Yarza Luaces. (February 15, 2012) "Realism and English Pre-Raphaelite" in Art History. Castilla and leon meeting. Retrieved May 30, 2018 from web.archive.org.
7. Donna Campbell (Reviewed). "Realism (late 1800s-early 1900s)" from "The New Book of Knowledge". Scolastic Art. Scholastic.com.