Realism was an artistic movement through which artists and authors tried to convey honest, objective, and authentic representations of the world. In contrast to its predecessor, romanticism, which emphasized emotion and imagination, realism stressed empirical reality. There was a belief among realists that science was the solution to the problems of everyday life, so many realist paintings depicted day-to-day life.
Many painters of this art movement also shared a sympathy for the poor and common people, and therefore often sharply criticized contemporary society. Because of this as well as its emergence soon after the 1848 revolutions, it was considered a new medium of revolutionary fervor. Although it is true that many of its supporters were radicals, there was no one political group that it attracted. All realists, however, agreed that the lower classes had the right to artistic representation.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
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| The Horse Fair, Rosa Bonheur and Nathalie Micas, Painted 1852-53
This painting, although finished and signed by Bonheur, was begun by the artist's life-long friend, Nathalie Micas. The scene exhibited is the horse market in Paris where dealers would show off their stock to potential buyers. The dome of La Salpêtrière is visible in the background. In the painting, the horses run around energetically in a circle, showing off their value to potential customers (watching in the back). Bonheur exhibits her love of animals by conveying their power and majesty, while their handlers have to concentrate fully on keeping them under control. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the horses by the simple surroundings, and also by the fact that no barriers exist between the viewer and the animals. The foreground is open, allowing easy access to the scene.
Rosa Bonheur was the most famous woman artist of the first three quarters of the nineteenth century. Although many women at this time were amateur artists, it was very unusual for a woman to pursue painting as a serious career. Also unusual was her family’s support in that endeavor. From age ten on, Bonheur spent hours sketching animals in parks on the outskirts of Paris; by age seventeen, she was contributing to her family's income by making copies of paintings in the Louvre. Born in Bordeaux, Bonheur received her training from her father, (a minor landscape painter) since women were not allowed to be taught in the official schools of art. In 1829, she moved with her family to Paris. Although her ambitions were uncoventional for the time, Bonheur was traditional in her working method. She studied her subjects carefully and produced many preparatory sketches before she applied paint to canvas. Bonheur's reputation grew steadily in the 1840s; she regularly exhibited her animal paintings and sculptures at the Paris Salon, from 1841 to 1853.
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012
(To Left) Photograph of Chateau de Chillon (for comparison), Veytaux, Switzerland
This photograph to the left compared to the painting above show how meticulously Courbet depicted the Chateau de Chillon in Switzerland. Notice the accurate use of light and dark, especially on the chateau and the woods behind. Also, the boat and the layers of mountains serve to show the vast scale of this area. Other realist landscapes, especially by Courbet are as true to life as modern photographs. Courbet attempted to learn in a Parisian art school in 1839, but preferred to develop his own style. Courbet felt that the lower classes should be represented in artwork and he address many social and political issues of the time.
"The Stone Breakers" by Gustave Courbet, 1849
This painting depicts a very young boy and a very elderly man breaking rocks, presumably so that a road or railway can be built. Courbet made a point of including these two extreme ages in order to show that those who were underprivileged were trapped by poverty, unable to improve their circumstances. The only thing for them to do was their work. The different ages were also included to represent mortality: the boy will grow up to be just like the old man, toiling for their entire life.
The painting itself is huge: 5' 5" x 7' 10". This provides a nearly life size view of the old man and the boy, giving the impression of stumbling across them in the road. One might pity for the workers, as it is apparent that they are performing strenuous and seemingly endless work. Despite this, they do not appear to be asking for pity, rather, they continue their honest labor.
Up until this point, paintings of such a large scale had been reserved for history paintings. As a realist, Courbet challenged these history paintings, and therefore chose to make this painting just as large. By doing so, he portrayed the struggles of ordinary people as being just as important as those events and themes in history. When "The Stone Breakers" and other paintings like it were shown in Paris salons, many people saw them as anarchist political threats, urging the rise of the proletariat.
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Thursday, February 9, 2012
A Burial at Ornans (Un enterrement a Ornans), 1849, Gustave Courbet, Musee D'Orsay, Paris, France
Gustave Courbet paints the death of his uncle in this enormous 10'x22' painting. Courbet recognized the significance of this painting towards to realist movement, saying "The Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of Romanticism." Typical with the realist movement, the individuals are depicted as accurately as possible, each with a unique face and outfit. Also, the soil and landscape are depicted as accurately as possible. The realist movement also represented the common people; most prior paintings depicted nature or the wealthy (Italian Renaissance). In this painting, Courbet focuses on the death of a common man, an event that would most likely go unnoticed except for his close friends and relatives nearby.
"The Gleaners" by Jean-Francois Millet, 1857, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France
This painting depicts three women gleaning, which meant going through the fields to pick up all of the ears of corn that were missed by the harvesters. This backbreaking task was seen as one of the lowest occupations of society, but despite this, Millet seems to glorify their dignity: even though there is an overseer far in the background (representing authority and the landlord who employs them), the women are not shown to be subservient. Although they are not exactly pleased with their situation, they show no signs of discontent or rebelliousness. The women simply do their arduous task, knowing that there is not much in the way of a reward in the end.
Because of its honest depiction of rural poverty, the painting was seen as politically subversive, much like Courbet's "The Stone Breakers."
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| Wagon of the Third Class (Le Wagon de troisième classe) 1864 -Honoré Victorin Daumier
This painting is the story of a family, depicitng three generations: young, middle-aged, and old. This gives the viewer a full spectrum of human life in the third class. Grown men are noticably absent implying that the women are attempting to make their way in the world alone. The weary face of the grandmother looks straight at the viewer, confronting them as if to convey the hardships that she has endured throughout her life. Additionally, the third-class family faces away from the rest of the passengers, which emphasizes its isolation and rejection from the rest of society. It is in quiet moments, such as riding in a shabby train car, that the weariness of the lives of the poor is captured. Daumier uses economy of line to keep his drawings simple and powerful.
The inspiration for this piece came from the conditions of the third class as well as the railroad itself, which had affected all levels of society. The peasants in Daumier's painting might be traveling to the city in search of jobs since they recently lost theirs to the mechanization of agriculture. The man who formerly hired the people in the third-class carriage to work his lands probably no longer needed them once he had a machine to do the work for him.
William Thomas Walters commissioned the painting along with two others (showing the First and Second classes). Daumier's other two paintings displayed better conditions than the ones shown in the Wagon of the Third Class. In The First-Class Carriage, there is almost no physical or psychological contact among its four well-dressed figures, whereas The Third-Class Carriage is tightly packed with an anonymous crowd of working-class men and women. This possibly was meant to convey that the third class was more human, or at least valued human contact more.
Generally not making much money off of his paintings, Honoré Victorin Daumier was primarily a lithographer, so Le Wagon de troisième classe was one of his few commisions. Daumier was known to be very critical of the Bourgeoise in his art as well as sympathetic to the poor, which got him into trouble with the government on multiple occasions. He was imprisoned twice for cartoons drawn which satirized the rule of Louis Phillipe in 1832.
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