Realism - Transcend the ordinaries

By the time of World War I, thanks to the Industrial Revolution, the United States became one of the strongest nations in the world. Romanticism then did not fit to this modernity anymore; therefore, authors and artists began to write, or draw, about ordinary life. In fact, Realism is the political movement which aims on the commoners: the working class. Realist works of art focus on their daily activities and even illustrate their ugly side. That is why at first a mass majority of people did not like the idea of Realism. They believed art should illustrate greater things, the richness and the gorgeous.

Let’s study the nine great artists of Realism below to understand about this school of art.

1. Gustave Courbet

In painting, Realism's most prominent representative was the French painter Gustave Courbet. “A Burial at Ornans” - now seen as one of the greatest genre paintings - depicts the funeral of Courbet's great-uncle which took place in September 1848, in the family's birthplace of Ornans, a small town near Besancon in north-eastern France. Rather than use professional models, which was normal practice, Courbet chose to paint the same townspeople who had been present at the burial, thus emphasizing the 'truthful' character of Realism.

Despite its modernity, "A Burial At Ornans" includes a number of traditional compositional features. The picture plane is made deliberately narrow and crowded in order to accentuate the monumentality and solidarity of the occasion. Moreover, through the use of muted colours (set off by the white bonnets, handkerchiefs, and clerical vestments) as well as the evening gloom, and the sober restraint shown by mourners and priests, the artist underlines the importance and dignity of an ordinary life and death.

This is another work from Courbet, “The Stonebreakers”, representing workers in monumental form. It is painted in 1849, depicting two ordinary peasant workers. Courbet painted without any apparent sentiment; instead, he let the image of the two men, one too young for hard labor and the other too old, express the feelings of hardship and exhaustion that he was trying to portray. Courbet shows sympathy for the workers and disgust for the upper class by painting these men with dignity all their own. The scene is coated with a warm tone, evoking nostalgia and grief.

2. Jean-Francois Millet

Millet, also a French, is best known for his rural Realism which highlighted the harsh working conditions of the peasants. Let’s look at two of his artworks below.

"The Angelus"

“The Angelus” depicts two peasant figures - a man and a woman - who have stopped working for a few minutes in order to recite the Angelus, a prayer. The scene is set during the potato harvest, just outside the village of Chailly-en-Biere in Barbizon, whose church steeple is visible in the distance. The couple were in the middle of digging potatoes when they heard the church bells, and all their tools were strewn about them, including sacks, a pitchfork, a basket of potatoes, and a wheelbarrow. By depicting these two silent figures in the middle of a vast cultivated plain, with only a few simple tools to help them scratch a living from the soil, Millet highlights the backbreaking life of the rural worker with its daily grind of physical toil which endures throughout the seasons.

"The man with a hoe"

The grinding hardship of peasant life comes largely from the constant cycle of the seasons and the backbreaking tasks associated with each of them. The laborer in this painting was no exception. Resting on his hoe, still panting from his exertions, he pauses for a rest. He is covered in sweat and wearing only his vest, a pair of rough trousers and clogs. He keeps his sleeves rolled down to protect himself against the hot sun. His face and neck are already a deep brown while his lips appear cracked and dry. The blank expression on his face is devoid of all vitality. It signals that he is really tired. In the background, several bonfires of unwanted foliage are burning away, sending up columns of smoke.

3. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the innovations of Impressionism

This artwork, “Souvenir de Mortefontaine” is considered as one of the masterpieces of Corot. It depicts a scene of tranquility. A glass-flat lake is covered by thin morning fog. A big leafy tree stretches up into the sky, green and full of energy, showing how strong life is. On the left side of the big tree stands a little tree with new leaves stretching up in the same direction with the big one. The sinuous of the branches create a sense of flow, exuding the vitality of nature. The sunlight sprays over the lake and is gross with colorful flowers and tender grass. The lake reflects the distant mount as a flat mirror. Under the smaller tree, a woman in red dress is picking fruits, a girl is getting flowers on the gross, and a boy is looking up and pointing to the fruits on the tree. Corot combined nature and human beings, and made it in a harmonious atmosphere. It gives people a sense of tranquility and peace in our soul.

"The Bridge at Narni"

The painting above is a perfect example of his style during his years living in Italy. Using traditional academic compositional methods, Corot leads the viewer's eye into and around the canvas with his winding river and carefully considered use of light.

The work is partly significant in indicating Corot's deep absorption of Neoclassical principles as a student in Paris. The idealized Mediterranean setting is rendered quasi-mythological by the inclusion of Roman ruins, the eponymous bridge being the Ponte d'Augusto, built under the Emperor Augustus around 27 BC.

4. Honore Daumier

"Transnonain Street"

Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century. This painting, “Transnonain Street”, was made to commemorate the massacre by the National Guard of innocent civilians during widespread unrest in Paris during the month of April 1834. According to accounts of the tragedy, gunshots had rung out from an upper floor window at 12 rue Transnonain and French troops responded by storming the building, opening fire, and wounding and killing residents of the working class abode. The picture reflects the image of a boy died in the massacre, weighing down on a baby. It shows the loss and pain of war in the realest way. In addition to the image, the cold color coated the painting increases the sadness of the scene.

"The burden"

The theme of this picture is about a normal woman and her child, as normal as Realism can be. However, this normalcy reflects a deeper meaning that artists want to send to society. This laundress or washerwoman symbolizes the poor, overburdened working woman and she is accompanied by the child she struggles to support. Bent under the weight of the heavy bag of laundry she is hauling and against the strong wind opposing her progress, the woman's face reflects determination rather than despair. Empty-handed but equally somewhat thwarted, the child echoes its mother's determination. Of course, the burden of the laundry and the strength of the wind are symbolic of the "greater forces" against which this woman and her child are fighting: poverty, a corrupt government, civic strife, and cyclical revolutions.

5. Eduart Manet

Eduart Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life.

"Olympia"

The painting above, “Olympia”, depicts a woman waiting for her maid to give her the wedding dress. It is her wedding day. Purposefully provocative, it shocked the viewers of that time because it is too obscene for them. Manet rather overtly includes a black cat, symbolizing heightened sexuality and prostitution - a characteristically Baudelarian symbol.

"The Execution of Emperor Maximilian"

Manet was a devout Republican and was keenly influenced by political events, and here he sought to record contemporary events like a history painter with modern vision. The Romantic spirit and muted tones create a distinctly somber, yet immediate scene. However, the painting's subject matter was too sensitive to be exhibited at the time.

6. Adolphe-William Bougeureau

William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.

"The birth of Venus"

In this painting, Bougeureau illustrates a famous origin narrative from Roman mythology, Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. She emerges from sea-foam standing on a shell, traversing the water to reach land. A flock of nymphs, tritons, and putti surround her in admiration while, in a take on the classic contrapposto stance of Venus Anadyomene from antiquity, the goddess accentuates the curves of her body in alternate directions, while adjusting her hair. Cool pastel colors evoke the dewy atmosphere of the marine world.

"The Nut Gatherers"

This painting depicts two young girls rest in a grassy clearing, pausing from the task of collecting hazelnuts. One holds a handful of nuts in front of her, while the other seems more interested in playing or sharing a secret. This work is an excellent example of Bouguereau's genre painting - work depicting scenes from everyday life - in which he generally favored the subject of women and girls in agricultural or domestic settings. His nut gatherers are dressed in plain peasant clothes, but appear exceptionally clean and content for members of the rural working poor.

7. Rosa Bonheur

"Plowing in the Nivernais"

Rosa Bonheur was also a France artist. This large oil painting, commissioned and exhibited in 1849 by the French government, was Bonheur's first early success. She primarily depicts animal subjects and here twelve oxen peacefully plough the land in preparation for future planting. Her focus on the land, the animals and the landscape tell a respectful story of timeless peasant life, work, and tradition. Similar to the Realists, Bonheur presents man and nature working seamlessly together to yield harvest from the lan

"The horse fair"

“The horse fair” was Bonheur's most famous painting. She dedicated herself to the study of draft horses at the dusty, wild horse market in Paris twice a week between 1850 and 1851. Her ability to capture the raw power, beauty and strength of the untamed animals in motion is superbly displayed in this dramatic scene.

The masterful handling of the motion and swirl of dark and light surrounding the pounding, unruly beasts controlled by calm, masterful handlers pulls the viewer into the energy and action of the scene. Bonheur again makes use of a strong diagonal line (as also in Plowing in the Nivernais) in composition where the brooding sky meets the treetops. On the far right, potential buyers calmly look down upon the controlled frenzy from the safety of a wooded hillside. The extremely active middle ground is balanced by the simplicity of the bare foreground and the atmospheric perspective in the background.

8. Thomas Eakins

Like other Art and Literature movements, Realism spreaded from Europe to the US. Among Realism US painters, Thomas Eakins is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history.

The artwork above is “The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake-Boat.” The painting focuses on the two-man crew in the foreground, wearing bright blue caps and pulling their oars through the water. They are in the process of passing a blue flag marker positioned in front and slightly right of the center foreground of the painting. In the background, other rowers can be seen and further in the distance black brushstrokes resemble a gathered crowd watching the race on the grassy field behind the river.

Being an athlete himself, Eakins also likes rowing, and he created six large-scale paintings and a series of watercolors of the subject. Many of his rowing works featured the two brothers.

"The Gross Clinic"

In this painting, Eakins paints Dr. Samuel D. Gross, a teacher and surgeon at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, engaged in a teaching demonstration of a surgical procedure for the medical students seated behind him. Graphic in nature, five other doctors operate on a patient's infected thigh. This scientific endeavor contrasts sharply with the emotional reaction of the lone woman in the scene, presumably the patient's mother. Behind the operation on the right side of the painting, two figures watch the proceedings from the shadow of the room's doorway. This work is one of Eakins' most important, well-known, and controversial paintings. It provides a clear example of his interest in scientific study and medicine.

9. John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings.

"Madame X"

Perhaps Sargent's most famous work, this portrait depicts a young socialite, an American expatriate named Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau and known as Madame X, who was married to a French banker, Pierre Gautreau. The Gautreaus did not commission the work. It was Sargent who initiated the project to capture this scandalous Parisian society figure known not only for her stunning looks but also her love affairs.

Sargent accentuates her presence by exposing her alabaster skin with a daring décolleté and setting her against a background of warm, muted, brown tones. The black satin dress with thin, jeweled straps that she is wearing shows off her stunning figure and, together with her ornate style of her auburn hair, is a typical contemporary aristocratic beauty. Her notorious reputation is hinted at through her particularly self-confident pose.

"Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children"

This painting of Sargent’s is a prime example of the commissioned portraits of the upper classes that eventually earned Sargent fame. The family's attire and the furniture included within the image evoke the height of opulence in 18th-century Britain. The sofa and the heavy, iridescent rose silk of Mrs. Meyer's gown shows off their wealth. Meyer is surrounded with objects of sumptuous luxury in order to emphasize her reputation as a lavish member of the London upper crust.

Conclusion

Realism has brought a new and modern breath to Art in mid-19th century. Is it too ordinary to be called "art"? I must say it is not. It is not about the subject that makes an artwork great or not, but about the eyes of the artists looking at it. Those who put all of their soul to see something will find its hidden beauty. And even if others do not regard his artwork as art, Realism paintings at least show them the reality: life is not equal and perfectly beautiful.