|
Realism in France & Early America 1850-1880
|
| |
|
|
Following the French Revolution
a surge of social reforms and interest in
the new ideals of democracy and equality
changed some of the expectations of what
role art and painting should play in society.
|
| |
Realism
in art meant depicting subjects at face
value or as they appeared in everyday life,
unadorned by sentiment or imagination. A
reaction again romanticism and, a genre
which dominated French literature and artwork
in the late 18th and early 19th century,
realism was expected to portray truth, however
sordid or ugly. In England it was a reaction
against Victorian materialism and the conventional
themes of the Royal Academy. |
| |
Realism
can be distinguished from Naturalism, another
closely associated movement of the same
period, mainly by viewing Realism as revealing
the unattractiveness of social realities
whereas Naturalism was allowed to reveal
the beauties of the natural, or real, world.
|
| |
|
The Driving Forces
|
| |
|
The introduction of photography excited an interest
in art that would also depict life in a
stark and realistic way. Truth and accuracy
were favored over interpretation or embellishment.
Outstanding examples of this 'photo-realism'
are the still life paintings of Ignace Henri
Theodore Fantin-Latour.
|
| |
|
Dramatic subjects, lofty images, and classical forms
were rejected in favor of paintings of simple
people in mundane situations and commonplace
themes.
|
| |
|
Techniques and Materials
|
| |
|
Scientific
developments in the field of light and optics
gave artists new tools to examine the optical
effects of light and how to portray accurately
on canvas what they saw in life.
|
| |
|
To achieve such photograph-like realism a high
degree of technical painting skill was required.
The realists had no quarrel with the exacting
painting techniques of the classical, pre-Impressionist
painters; their quarrel was in the subjects
chosen. |
| |
|
Natural
light, even when dark and gloomy, was favored
over artificial highlighting for dramatic
effect. Whether a portrait of a man sitting
in his dark study or laborers sweating in
the glaring sun, both must be faithfully
recorded. |
| |
|
The Artist as Recorder
of Reality
|
| |
|
The
works of French Realistic artists Gustave
Courbet, The Stonebreakers (1849),
Honoré Daumier, and Jean François Millet
have been described as social realism. |
| |
Other
artists, such as Marie Rosalie Bonheur,
Hilaire Germain, Edgar Degas, Ignace Henri
Theodore Fantin-Latour, Wilhelm Leibl, and
Edouard Manet all painted in the realistic
manner during this period. |
| |
Early
American realist painters popular during
the same period included Thomas Eakins,
a portrait painter employing an extremely
realistic technique later found to have
been aided by photographic projections,
and John Singleton Copley, whose laboriously
painted, innocently honest, and amazingly
realistic portraits of Colonial leaders
and everyday life became historical depictions
of real life in early America |
