Painting: Realism, in The Arts, The Accurate, Detailed, Unembellished Depiction of Nature or of

realism, in the arts, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of
contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close

observation of outward appearances. As such, realism in its broad sense
has comprised many artistic currents in different civilizations. In the visual arts, for
example, realism can be found in ancient Hellenistic Greek sculptures accurately
portraying boxers and decrepit old women. The works of such 17th-century painters
as Caravaggio, the Dutch genre painters, the Spanish painters José de Ribera, Diego
Velázquez, and Francisco de Zurbarán, and the Le Nain brothers in France are realist in
approach. The works of the 18th-century English novelists Daniel Defoe, Henry
Fielding, and Tobias Smollett may also be called realistic.
Realism was not consciously adopted as an aesthetic program until the mid-19th century
in France, however. Indeed, realism may be viewed as a major trend in French novels
and paintings between 1850 and 1880. One of the first appearances of the
term realism was in the Mercure français du XIXe siècle in 1826, in which the word is
used to describe a doctrine based not upon imitating past artistic achievements but
upon the truthful and accurate depiction of the models that nature and contemporary
life offer the artist. The French proponents of realism were agreed in their rejection of
the artificiality of both the Classicism and Romanticism of the academies and on the
necessity for contemporaneity in an effective work of art. They attempted to portray the
lives, appearances, problems, customs, and mores of the middle and lower classes, of
the unexceptional, the ordinary, the humble, and the unadorned. Indeed, they
conscientiously set themselves to reproducing all the hitherto-ignored aspects of
contemporary life and society—its mental attitudes, physical settings, and material
conditions.
Realism was stimulated by several intellectual developments in the first half of the 19th

century. Among these were the anti-Romantic movement in Germany, with its emphasis
on the common man as an artistic subject; Auguste Comte’s Positivist philosophy, in
which sociology’s importance as the scientific study of society was emphasized; the rise
of professional journalism, with its accurate and dispassionate recording of current
events; and the development of photography, with its capability of mechanically
reproducing visual appearances with extreme accuracy. All these developments
stimulated interest in accurately recording contemporary life and society.
Painting
Gustave Courbet was the first artist to self-consciously proclaim and practice the realist
aesthetic. After his huge canvas The Studio (1854–55) was rejected by
the Exposition Universelle of 1855, the artist displayed it and other works under the
label “Realism, G. Courbet” in a specially constructed pavilion. Courbet was strongly
opposed to idealization in his art, and he urged other artists to instead make the
commonplace and contemporary the focus of their art. He viewed the frank portrayal of
scenes from everyday life as a truly democratic art. Such paintings as his Burial at
Ornans (1849) and the Stone Breakers (1849), which he had exhibited in the Salon of
1850–51, had already shocked the public and critics by the frank and unadorned
factuality with which they depicted humble peasants and labourers. The fact that
Courbet did not glorify his peasants but presented them boldly and starkly created a
violent reaction in the art world.
The style and subject matter of Courbet’s work were built on ground already broken by
the painters of the Barbizon School. Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François
Daubigny, Jean-François Millet, and others in the early 1830s settled in the French
village of Barbizon with the aim of faithfully reproducing the local character of the
landscape. Though each Barbizon painter had his own style and specific interests, they
all emphasized in their works the simple and ordinary rather than the grandiose and
monumental aspects of nature. They turned away from melodramatic picturesqueness
and painted solid, detailed forms that were the result of close observation. In such works
as The Winnower (1848), Millet was one of the first artists to portray peasant labourers
with a grandeur and monumentality hitherto reserved for more important persons.
Another major French artist often associated with the realist tradition, Honoré
Daumier, drew satirical caricatures of French society and politics. He found his
working-class heroes and heroines and his villainous lawyers and politicians in the
slums and streets of Paris. Like Courbet, he was an ardent democrat, and he used his
skill as a caricaturist directly in the service of political aims. Daumier used energetic
linear style, boldly accentuated realistic detail, and an almost sculptural treatment of
form to criticize the immorality and ugliness he saw in French society.

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Painting: Realism, in The Arts, The Accurate, Detailed, Unembellished Depiction of Nature or of

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realism, in the arts, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of

contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close

Realism was stimulated by several intellectual developments in the first half of the 19th

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