Realism in 19th Century Painting and Literature

A R T O F T H E M I D D L E A N D L A T E
1 9 T H C E N T U R Y
Realism in Painting and
Literature
Learning Objectives
development of the Realist style
painting
painting and literature
Realism in Painting
wanted to branch
away from fantastic or Romanticized representation of life and
nature and
instead strove to depict real-life events with real-life detail.

and instead
represent life as it actually was – not filtered through just one
person’s
understanding or emotion. They wanted to represent life without
any
embellishments and this meant even dealing with its ugly, dirty,
or low sides.
representation.
– with
the here and now
rather than some romanticized past or utopian future.
classes and rural poor.
vey the idea that ordinary people in
modern times, not
archaic gods or kings and queens, were the proper subject for
modern art.
iconography in their
paintings, such as Biblical allusions, mythological subjects, or
complex symbols.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
from Romantic,
sublime, and idealized art toward a more true-to-life style in

painting. He,
like most Realists, was also a social activist on the side of the
working classes.
new approach to
painting and which reinforce the characteristics on the previous
slide:
appearances
of my time as I
see them – in a word, to create a living art this has been my
aim…”
objects visible
and tangible to the painter…[who must apply] his personal
faculties to the
ideas and the things of the period in which he lives…”
can consist only
of the representation of things both real and existing…An
abstract object,
invisible or nonexistent, does not belong to the domain of
painting”
why he never
painted angels, Courbet replied, “Show me an angel, and I’ll
paint one.”
Courbet

Self-Portrait
1848
Here is Courbet’s self-portrait. You can tell he
has not tried to create an idealized image of
himself or an overly sentimental image either. It
is simply what he sees in the mirror – for better
or for worse!
Gustave Courbet The Stone-Breakers (1849)
This painting, and therefore the figures in it, were done on a
very large scale (5’3” x 8’6”). This was unusual given the
relatively basic subject
matter. Courbet did this on purpose, though. The size of his
figures alone gave them importance – even if they weren’t
famous or powerful.
Courbet Burial at Ornans (1850)
This painting is also done on a monumental scale. It is 21 ft
long and 10 ft
high! The figures are larger than life size.

Courbet said this painting was “the negation of the ideal…and
the
Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of Romanticism.”
What aspects of the painting (subject, style, color, etc)
distinguish this from most Romantic paintings?
Courbet Interior of My Studio (1854)
anifesto of Realism and an intentional
allegory for Courbet’s life
and the Realist movement.
landscape scene. On one side he
is being watched by a nude women and on the other by a young
boy. Behind the
canvas he’s sitting at stands another canvas with a religious
image painted on it.
the 19th century. Nature is
representative of Romanticism, the nude woman is probably
Neoclassicism, and the
other canvas is representative of religious art.
–
the working class.

depicted.
– the rich and powerful of
society.
be seen.
the right are those whom
he paints for.
the artist as the mediator between the working class
and the ruling class.
Courbet Beach in Normandy (1875)
Realist Painting
previous slide) with a Romantic view of the beach
(Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea) on the next slide. This

comparison gives you a good sense of how different the
two periods represented nature.
Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875)
sant
Painter.”
peasants in rural settings.
anonymous people with dignity and
importance.
accomplishes this is by creating large
figures in his paintings. Most of the people
Millet painted were placed in the
foreground and dominate the canvas –
forcing the viewer to see them as large and
important.
founders of the Barbizon School of painters
in France.

Millet
The Sower
(1850)
Compared to Courbet, Millet’s paintings look and
feel a bit different. You get the sense he cares
about the peasants he paints and so they don’t feel
quite as objective or detached as Courbet.
However, the representation of contemporary
people and the hardworking poor aligns the two
painters.
Millet Woman Baking Bread (1854)
Millet The Gleaners (1857)
Gleaners were peasants so poor they were allowed to pick up
leftovers after a harvest –
known as gleaning the fields – in order to get food to eat.
Rosa Bonheur (1822 – 1899)
very often her paintings were of the
animals or land instead of people. In so
doing, she creates a very accurate

portrait of rural life in the 19th century.
representations of animals, but instead,
painstakingly anatomically correct
animals.
an emotion, simply in reconstructing
the scene as life-like as possible.
Rosa Bonheur
The Horse Fair (1853)
Notice the extreme detail paid to everything from anatomy,
musculature, and light to sheen, color, texture, and
movement. Bonheur would spend months studying her subjects
before she began to paint them.
Delacroix’s Frightened Horse
Delacroix’s painting is a good point of comparison between
Romantic and Realist painting. The representation of
Delacroix's horse and Bonheur’s horse reveal the different
approaches and ideals between the two movements.

Rosa Bonheur
Plowing in Nivernais (1850)
This painting is located at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota so
you can see it in person!
Rosa Bonheur
Virtual Tour of the Ringling Museum
Once the room comes up, scroll to the left to see the painting.
Click on the link below to go to the room in the Ringling
Museum where Bonheur’s
Plowing in Nivernais painting is located. You will also be able
to see another painting
by Bonheur in the same room.
http://www.motion-
vr.net/tours/RinglingMuseum/Gallery21.html
Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
in politics.
lifetime

for various Paris newspapers and journals commenting on all
aspects
of society – from political and economic issues to fashion
trends and
parenting. Some of them even got him thrown in jail.
– literally “stone writing”
mage drawn onto stone is transferred to paper by
pressing paper
down on the inked stone.
and
social commentary.
made.
atch this *Lithography Demonstration*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHw5_1Hopsc
(1831)
Gargantua (1831)
this
print (so did his printer)!
helped those in
power get

richer at the expense of the working class.
-Philippe (the “Bourgeois-King”) who
came to
power after the July Revolution of 1830. This means he has
been
in power only a year when Daumier represents him as a
gargantuan, overweight man sitting on a throne. He is
continuously eating the lower and middle class workers’ taxes
thus
making him larger and larger (or more and more powerful).
-Philippe are his wealthy supporters who
run to
catch the money and laws he ‘gives off’ which make them
wealthier
and wealthier.
-Philippe which Daumier caricatures
here
ultimately led to the popular Revolution of 1848.
(1831)
Daumier Le Ventre Legislatif or The Legislative Belly (1834)
It isn’t too hard to guess what Daumier thought of the French
legislators or the laws they passed.
Daumier

Nader Elevating
Photography to Art
1863
This print is actually making fun of the newly
developed genre of photography. Daumier
didn’t actually think photography should be
considered “art” and thought it was only a fad
that would pass quickly.
Daumier Third-Class Carriage (1862)
Daumier
The Laundress
(1864)
Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
a hard figure to classify in the 19th century.

fact, he was
very much part of the social and artistic atmosphere that made
the modern
world. His paintings represent all the aspects of this modern
world:
contemporary people, workers, locations, buildings, and
activities.
next slide) was
rejected from the
official Salon exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris in
1863 (along with
almost 3,000 others).
many of these new
artists called the Salon des Refusés (“Exhibition of the
Refused/Rejected
Painters”).
what was called
at the time one of the most shocking and scandalous paintings
ever exhibited in
Paris – the Déjeuner sur l’herbe – and it was meant to be.
Manet Déjeuner sur l’herbe (“Luncheon on the Grass”) (1863)
Can you tell what it is about this painting that was considered
so

scandalous, threatening, and vulgar for the 19th century?
Surely it couldn’t be the nudity in Manet’s painting that was
considered so vulgar.
After all, this painting, Cabanel‘s Birth of Venus, was the
winner of the Academic
Salon’s highest honor in 1863 (the same salon which rejected
Manet’s painting!). In
fact, you could probably argue this painting is even more
revealing than Manet’s.
The reason Manet’s naked female was so
scandalous and threatening was due to the
fact that she was a real, modern woman
looking directly at the viewer of the painting.
This is someone you might walk into on the
street. The representation of the goddess
Venus, however, is an idealized and
allegorical image of the female body – it isn’t
real and therefore isn’t threatening.
Titian Pastoral Concert (1509)
Can you notice the similarities between this Renaissance
masterpiece and Manet’s painting?

Titian’s Pastoral Concert hung in Paris’ Louvre Museum at this
time as an example of a great
Renaissance work. Manet’s painting is obviously quite similar.
So, again, why the powerful outrage at Manet’s painting if it so
close to an accepted
masterpiece? Well, the reasons are similar to that given in the
previous example.
Manet's scene was too real, too close, too contemporary, too
human. Manet's figures were
neither mythological, like the Birth of Venus, nor historical or
pastoral, like in the Pastoral
Concert. Characters from classical mythology or shepherds from
some remote region of time
past posed no threat to society, but Manet's subjects were
intentionally real, 19th century people
who saw nothing wrong with removing their clothes for an
afternoon lunch in the park.
Manet Déjeuner sur l’herbe (“Luncheon on the Grass”) (1863)
Manet Olympia (1865)
Olympia was considered just as scandalous – and for many of
the same reasons - as the

Dejeuner sur l’herbe. This is not an idealized woman but a real
woman of the late 19th
century. Also, Olympia was a common name for a prostitute of
the time – far from ideal.
Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538)
This is one of the most famous reclining nudes from the
Renaissance. Can you see the differences between this
painting and the way Manet represents his reclining nude? Why
might people accept this one and reject Manet’s?
Manet Olympia (1865)
Winslow Homer (1836 – 1910)
-known
American Realist artist. He created both paintings and
prints for newspapers and magazines that almost
exclusively dealt with the horrors of the Civil War or
the injustices of slavery.
ike most American Realist paintings and
literature, attempts to illuminate the brutal conditions
of slavery, the violence of the Civil War, and the plight
of the freed slaves in 19th century America.
Winslow Homer Veteran in a New Field (1865)

the Civil War
has ended.
finds himself back
in his agricultural field – thus a veteran in a new field.
waves of grain and
bright colors. But the more closely you look at the painting the
more you
realize it isn’t all joy and back to normal.
an see his uniform and canteen
are in the
bottom right (in the next slide).
scars are
not. This man has left the war and is back at home, but the
impact of his
war experiences are still with him.
grain with the
weapon associated with the Grim Reaper – an obvious image of
death.

Homer paints a much different image after the Civil War
than Church’s Romantic painting Rainbow in the Tropics
Winslow Homer The Gulf Stream (1899)
This is a representation of the plight of the freed slave at the
end of the 19th century.
Can you pick out all of the various obstacles this man faces?
Winslow Homer
This painting was modeled off of a painting by Millet (on the
next slide) both representing the
rural poor exhausted from a day of hard work.
Homer The Bright Side (1865)
Millet Noonday Rest

Realism in Literature
farther and farther away from
the emotional, idealized world of Romanticism beginning
around 1848.
most people knew.
egan writing short stories, novels, and essays that
addressed contemporary life
and that very often had a social consciousness underpinning the
narratives.
plight of the poor can be
seen just as much in Realist literature as it can in Realist
painting.
portray the lives,
appearances, problems, and customs of the middle and lower
classes.
rs, peasants,
housewives, and chimney
sweepers, among various others. And while not exclusively, it
dealt mainly with
people in the urban setting.
hitherto ignored aspects of
contemporary life.

individuals; but also no shepherds,
wizards, or mythological characters - only society’s current
attitudes, physical
settings, material conditions, and people.
Realism in Literature
aracters in Realist literature were modeled, or could
have been modeled, after real people.
kind of artificial, sentimental
emotion, and without romanticizing the actions or lives of
individual characters.
- not as it
should be or ought to be. This meant
including the sordid, nasty, dirty, and ugly sides to life as well.
accurate as possible – very much like a
newspaper reporter.
contemporary social environment into
their stories. They would critique the bourgeoisie world for its
hypocrisy and cruelty and they
also critiqued the effects of industrialization and mechanization
on humanity.
and/or political environment but it is
usually not overtly stated by the author or narrator. The story

itself reveals what is wrong.
anything overtly, nor is he/she going to
preach morality or social conventions to us; but instead, the
author allows the characters and
actions to speak for themselves.
literature.
(Romanticism) to generally focusing on
Society (Realism). There is also a shift in perspective from the
Subjective (Romanticism) to
the Objective (Realism).
Realism in France
He was one of the first
writers to create a detailed, encyclopedic portrait of the entire
range of people within
French society. He attempted this enormous feat in his series of
novels collectively called
The Human Comedy.
spanned the entire spectrum of
19th century French society from housewives to merchants to
industrial workers.

though not exclusively, in the
urban center of Paris.
themes Balzac deals with in The Human
Comedy is how industrialism
has profoundly changed middle class values.
capitalism had come to
dominate the lives of the middle and lower classes at the
expense of intimate human
relationships. He reveals how people’s attitudes, relationships,
and lives have been
altered due to the importance placed upon objects and money
instead of people.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/metabook/humancomedy.html
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/metabook/humancomedy.html
Realism in France
• Flaubert’s Madame Bovary firmly established the Realist style
in
literature. It follows the life of its protagonist, Emma Bovary,
in
meticulous detail. Flaubert records both her behavior and her
surroundings with a precise, objective, systematic, and
journalistic
perspective.

• Flaubert was actually placed on trial because of the book and
accused
of corrupting French morals by writing about such a woman.
Romanticism and
its worldview. Emma Bovary is portrayed as an emotional and
idealistic
Romantic living in the new, modern world. Through her life,
pain, and
destruction the reader is shown how ill-equipped Romantic
values are to
deal with the realities of modern life.
the
textbook.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2413/2413-h/2413-h.htm
Realism in England
, the Realist style had perhaps its greatest
expression in the works of Charles Dickens.
urbanization:
Christmas Carol (1843), David
Copperfield (1850), Hard Times (1854), e.g.
harsh realities of urban and industrial
life.

industrialization at a personal
level, not just at the social or political level.
industrialization are innately flawed and
can’t work (as Marx does). Instead, he condemns the people
who create the horrible living and
working conditions for others.
seem to suggest capitalism could work
in a good way if the bourgeoisie (Scrooge) actually cared more
about their workers (Bob
Cratchit) than every penny of profit. After all, it isn’t the
system which keeps Bob Cratchit and
Tiny Tim down, it’s Scrooge. Hence, when Scrooge changes his
view on what’s important their
lives get better.
Shop in the textbook.
ttention to detail after detail of the environment Dickens
describes. What is he suggesting the
modern urban world is like? What about his style seems to draw
out the seemingly unending images he
describes?
Realism in America

literature in America came out of the
conditions of slavery and the
Civil War.
examples, anywhere, of Realist
literature are the slave narratives which develop in the United
States.
ck Douglas’ Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas
(1845)
For example, he doesn’t tell you what
to feel or think, he simply relates his story and faithfully tells
you what he has endured and
experienced. Douglas does not infuse his narrative with over-
the-top emotion, sentimentality, or
exaggeration even though many of the scenes, actions, and
experiences he describes are horrific.
es
without any prompting from the author
on how we are supposed to feel.
Freedom in Reading 28.5 in the textbook.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1885)
dialects and speech patterns he uses.
the first paragraph of Chapter 1. His mastery
of dialect and speech is apparent from the very first sentence.

smooth-out or ignore the ugly side to life.
Instead, he deals directly with social and political issues even if
they are taboo or may cause some
people to become uncomfortable. He forces his readers to deal
with the real situation, and not
necessarily the one we want or the one that makes us feel good.
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DouNarr.html
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Twa2Tom.html
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Twa2Huc.html
Realism in Russia
-1881) was one of the greatest
Russian Realists who influenced not only
Russian literature, but world literature, with his works.
predated Sigmund Freud and he was able to
imbue his characters with all the psychological depth of real
individuals. Dostoevsky’s novels often
reveal his belief in the personal freedom of choice and the
worth of every individual – even amid the
vast anonymity of modern industrial and urban life. These are
topics drawn directly from his personal
experiences and the experiences of millions of Russians during
the 19th century.
writings were anti-government and he ran
in intellectual circles that had socialist leanings. His first job

was in the Engineering Corps of the
Russian Army, but he resigned because of fear of what would
happen to him if his writings were
discovered.
immediately sentenced to be executed.
He was given a last second reprieve, however, and instead of
death he was sent to a work camp in
Siberia. That wasn’t the end of his punishment though! Once he
was released he was still required to
spend the next 10 years as part of the Russian army.
d and begins the greatest part of his
writing career. It is at this time that he
writes perhaps his most famous novel, Crime and Punishment
(1866).
the mind of a male student as he
ponders killing someone. It looks at the psychology,
personality, and thought processes involved
in human decision-making and how we justify the negative
things we do.
http://www.readcentral.com/book/Fyodor-Dostoevsky/Read-
Crime-and-Punishment-Online
Realism in Russia
– 1910) was another great Russian Realist
writer.

literature: The Life of Ivan
Ilyich, Anna Karenia and War and Peace.
f Tolstoy and his style
of Realism in that they
are all written in an objective, almost completely detached
fashion. Tolstoy
especially adheres to the Realist ideal of not explicitly stating
morality or judgments
– just recording the facts.
nts people, places, and actions in great detail staying
true-to-life without
romanticizing anything or creating any kind of artistic
sentimentality.
Flaubert’s Madame
Bovary and is generally held up as the quintessential Realist
text.
different families.
common person at the hands of
those with money and power. Two of the main characters also
reveal the differences in
views and perspectives of the Romantic and Modern minds
(similar to Emma and Léon in
Madame Bovary).
reaches 1,475 pages in its English
translation!
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600
The End
Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style.

Realism in 19th Century Painting and Literature

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