Realism
Painters who rejected idealization and painted what was in front of them: working people, ordinary rooms, and the physical reality of bodies and landscapes.
Realism: Painting What Is There
In 1855, a French painter named Gustave Courbet built a temporary exhibition hall outside the entrance to the Universal Exposition in Paris. He called it the Pavilion of Realism. Inside, he hung forty of his own paintings. The official exposition had rejected some of his work, and he decided to show it on his own terms. He put a sign over the door that read: "Du realisme," and in the catalog he declared that his goal was to "translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of the epoch as I understand them." This was the opening shot of Realism as a movement. Courbet was saying that painting should show the world as it is, not as mythology, history, or idealization would have it. He painted stone breakers, burials, and village women. He painted the people he grew up with in Ornans, a small town in eastern France, not Greek gods or Roman heroes.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
Courbet was the founder and the most aggressive member of the Realist movement. He was physically large, politically radical, and deliberately confrontational. He painted "A Burial at Ornans" in 1849, a painting over twenty feet wide showing the funeral of his great-uncle in a village cemetery. The painting shows forty-six life-size figures, all real people from Ornans, standing around an open grave. There is no drama. No one is grieving theatrically. They are just standing there, the way people stand at a funeral. The painting was attacked by critics who said it was ugly, that ordinary villagers did not deserve a canvas this large, and that the figures were too realistic to be art. Courbet did not care. He said he had never seen an angel and therefore could not paint one. This attitude, that painting should be based on observation rather than imagination, is the core of Realism. His paintings of the sea, including the works available in our store, show waves and clouds with a physical weight that makes them feel like weather rather than scenery. He spent time on the Normandy coast and painted the ocean from direct observation, capturing the specific quality of light on water under overcast skies.
Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Manet is the link between Realism and Impressionism. He never called himself an Impressionist and never exhibited with them, but his work opened the door they walked through. His "The Railway" from 1873, available in our store, shows a woman and a child at the Gare Saint-Lazare. Behind them, steam from the trains fills the background. The woman is looking at the viewer. The child is looking at the trains. The painting is modern in every sense: modern subject, modern setting, modern composition. Manet's portraits of women, also in our store, show the same directness. He painted women as they appeared, not as idealized beauties. His work was rejected by the Salon repeatedly, and he became a hero to younger painters who saw in his work a way forward from academic tradition.
Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
Homer was an American painter who started as a magazine illustrator during the Civil War. He covered the Union Army for Harper's Weekly, drawing soldiers in camp and in battle. After the war, he painted scenes of rural American life, then moved to the coast of Maine and painted the ocean. "The Gulf Stream," available in our store, shows a Black man lying on the deck of a small boat with a broken mast, surrounded by sharks. The man is looking toward the horizon, where a ship is visible. The painting is about survival, endurance, and the indifference of nature. Homer painted it in 1899 after a trip to the Bahamas, and it is one of the most powerful paintings in American art.
Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899)
Bonheur was the most successful female painter of the nineteenth century. She specialized in animal painting, a genre that was not considered high art but that she elevated through sheer technical skill and observation. "The Horse Fair," her most famous painting, is eight feet wide and shows horses being exercised at a horse market in Paris. The painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work in our store shows horses with a physical presence that comes from years of studying animal anatomy. She visited slaughterhouses to study animal musculature and kept a menagerie of animals at her studio. She was the first woman to receive the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, France's highest civilian award.
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)
Tanner was the first African American painter to achieve international recognition. He was born in Pittsburgh, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins, and moved to Paris in 1891 to escape the racial discrimination that made it impossible for him to work in the United States. In Paris, he found a society where his race was not a barrier to his career. His genre paintings, including the work available in our store, show ordinary people doing ordinary work. "The Young Sabot Maker" from 1895 shows a boy making wooden shoes in a workshop. The painting is about craftsmanship, dignity, and the transmission of skill from one generation to the next. Tanner later turned to religious painting, but his early realist work remains his most influential.
Why Realism Matters
Realism was the first art movement to say that ordinary life is a worthy subject for serious painting. This idea seems obvious now. It was radical in 1855. The academic tradition said that painting should show idealized beauty, historical events, or mythological narratives. Realism said that a stone breaker, a funeral, a woman at a railway station, and a man on a broken boat surrounded by sharks are all subjects that deserve a painter's full attention and skill. This idea opened the door for every subsequent movement that took everyday life as its subject. Impressionism, which painted cafe tables and boating parties, built on Realism. The Ashcan School, which painted New York tenements and street scenes, built on Realism. Social realism, documentary photography, and contemporary figurative painting all trace their lineage back to Courbet's pavilion outside the Universal Exposition in 1855.
Where to See Realist Paintings
The Musee d'Orsay in Paris has the largest collection of Courbet, including "A Bural at Ornans" and "The Painter's Studio." The Metropolitan Museum of Art has Manet, Homer, and Tanner. The National Gallery in London has works by Courbet and Manet. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a significant collection of Henry Ossawa Tanner's work. Winslow Homer's work is concentrated at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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