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Realism

Realism painted ordinary people and everyday life as they were, without idealising or dramatic effects. It treated farm workers and city labourers as serious subjects.

Period
Nineteenth-century art
Approximate dates
c. 1840 to c. 1880
Place of origin
France
Key regions
France, Britain, Russia, the United States
Art forms
Painting, drawing, printmaking, early photography
Major artists
Gustave Courbet, Jean-Francois Millet, Honore Daumier, Rosa Bonheur

Visual introduction

  • A Burial at Ornans

    Gustave Courbet · 1849 to 1850 · Oil on canvas · Musee d'Orsay, Paris

    A very large painting of an ordinary village funeral, which shocked viewers used to heroic subjects.

    Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Gleaners

    Jean-Francois Millet · 1857 · Oil on canvas · Musee d'Orsay, Paris

    Gives monumental dignity to poor women gathering leftover grain.

    Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Third-Class Carriage

    Honore Daumier · c. 1862 to 1864 · Oil on canvas · The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Shows tired working passengers with sympathy and without idealising them.

    Image: CC0, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, via Wikimedia Commons

Historical context

Realism grew after the revolutions of 1848 and during the Industrial Revolution. Cities were growing, and workers and farmers were demanding a voice. Artists such as Courbet wanted to paint the world they actually saw, not myth or history.

Photography, invented in the 1830s and 1840s, also pushed painters to think about what it means to record reality. The movement was often controversial because it gave large canvases to poor and working people.

Visual characteristics

Subject: labourers, peasants, funerals, trains, markets and city life, in true-to-life settings.

Form and colour: honest, often muted colour and solid, unflattering figures.

Scale and tone: large formats once kept for history paintings were used for everyday scenes, with a direct, sober mood.

Related movements

Sources and further reading

Further reading: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Tate, Art Terms. Smarthistory.