19th Century Realism in Art
Realism
Realism was an aesthetic trend born in France as a reaction against both the official academic art and the unbridled imagination and romantic idealism. It developed in Europe from 1840-1880.
Realistic Painting
Realistic painting did not introduce major innovations in techniques. Naturalistic Baroque masters, especially Spanish and Italian, were revalued. Its greatest innovation was the following topics: the world of work of workers and peasants. The advent of photography in 1839 strongly influenced art, pretending otherwise reality.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
Gustave Courbet was the most important and distinctive painter of Realism. Maverick in his life and his work, and with socialist ideas, he had actively participated in the Paris Commune of 1871, being appointed head of the Committee on the Arts. Imprisoned and fined when the Commune fell, he fled to Switzerland. Willful, proud, and confident, Courbet did not accept criticism. He wanted to be objective, to make a scientific art, free of prejudice. He thought you should paint only what he could experience with the senses, what he saw. That’s why his eye is like a photographer’s. His painting was not indifferent to the problems of society, but was compromised. He painted the raw misery of the human condition. His large canvases of social issues were shocking to the bourgeoisie that they considered vulgar and ugly. Courbet was a revolutionary more for the subjects than for his techniques. He was inspired by the great Baroque masters, especially Caravaggio, Zurbarán, and Velázquez. He is distinguished by his taste for chiaroscuro, the domain of black and brown colors, abetunados (his later works show a greater richness of color) and his broad strokes, thick and irregular, with rich and thick impasto that he applied with a spatula.
Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)
Jean-François Millet was the painter of rural life. In two masterpieces, “The Angelus” and “The Gleaners”, he accurately describes the work of the farmers who lived in great poverty and were illiterate. Millet’s realism is infused with poetry, melancholy, and sadness. He envelops his figures, simplifying their volumes by drawing on a foggy atmosphere, with gorgeous light studies to explain the harmonious union of man and nature. At the end of his life, he painted pure landscapes.
Honoré Daumier (1808-1889)
Honoré Daumier was a brilliant political cartoonist who satirized bourgeois society and King Louis Philippe in his lithographs for the Parisian weeklies, which is why he was jailed for six months. His works – “The third car,” “Mutiny”, and “Laundry” – were disliked by his subjects, taken from the squalid daily life of the humble inhabitants of the industrial city, or by his technique, which seemed crude and unfinished for the freedom of brushwork and strong expressiveness of his line.
Spain
Realism had more oil development in Spain due to the delay of the Industrial Revolution and the relative isolation of the Spanish art world.
Ramon Marti Alsina (1826-1894)
Ramon Marti Alsina was the painter who, following Courbet, best reflected in his works the status of the Barcelona working class, as well as everyday scenes and landscapes.
Carlos de Haes (1829-1898)
Carlos de Haes, of Belgian origin, was an extraordinary landscape painter, engaging in their natural and painted sketches in the workshop. He is famous for his painting “Picos de Europa”.
Mariano Fortuny (1838-1874)
Mariano Fortuny was the most celebrated painter with his genre paintings and exotic North African themes, made with great vivacity and easy and precious technique. His small picture “The Vicarage” is well known.
History Painting
The most popular genre was history painting, with great verisimilitude and detail reconstructing the past. The painters Antonio Gisbert (1834-1902) with “The Execution of Torrijos” and Eduardo Rosales (1836-1873), gifted with his famous “The Testament of Isabella the Catholic”, stood out.
Realistic Sculpture
Realistic sculpture had much less development than painting, usually staying within the academic. The conservative middle class, a client of the artists, showed an interest in decorating the city with monumental sculptures, buildings, and gardens, made in fine materials (bronze and marble). They also adorned the inside of their homes with small sculptures, not just bronze and marble but terracotta and ceramics. Favorite subjects were portraits, usually inspired by the Roman busts and Renaissance, and animals, and social character.
France
In France, the highlight is the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875), author of the famous Dance Group, a relief that decorates the Paris Opera. It is a classical form representing a group of Bacchae dancing naked around a winged genius, in clear exaltation of joy and bliss of life.
Belgium
In Belgium, there is another great artist, the sculptor Constantin Meunier (1831-1904). Very realistic in his bronzes, he represented the theme of the working class at work. His figures are full of dignity in their suffering (The Miner, The Digger).