This document provides an overview of mid-19th century art and architecture, focusing on the rise of realism alongside technological developments of the Industrial Revolution. Key points include: - The increasing use of iron in architecture, seen in buildings like the Crystal Palace and Eiffel Tower, enabled new construction possibilities. - Realist works depicted everyday subjects and the working classes in a truthful, unidealized manner. Artists included Courbet, Millet, Daumier, Eakins, and Homer. - Photography influenced realism by providing reference for accurate depictions. - Developments in transportation like trains contributed to industrial and economic changes in society. - The Arts and Crafts movement

1. Mid 19th Century Art & Architecture:
Realism, Photography, and Iron
Iron Opens Doors…

2. Industrial Revolution - Economy
Time Frame of Realism: 1848-late 1860s
– beginning: conclusion of Napoleonic Wars
– trains – transport raw materials to factories in city
– effect: class system
• capitalists --> gained centralized economic control
• laboring class --> lack of education & poor living
• middle class --> adopted “laissez-faire” policy

3. Industrial Revolution: Technology
• Photography
• Trains
• Iron – steel in
building!

4. Crystal Palace, Sir John
Paxton, London, iron and
glass, 1850
This building used new IRON technology in an ironic way... What
FIRSTS were made by this building?

5. Grand Staircase, the Opera,
1861-74, Paris, Charles
Garnier
(IRON structure)
Historicism style-different
periods combined
Urban redevelopment plan
for Paris by Napoleon III
Based on Baroque style
Garnier: “to hear, to see,
and above all, to be seen”
Mirrors on columns for
ladies to check their hair

6. Eiffel Tower, Gustav Eiffel,
Paris, 1889, iron.
Taller than Notre Dame and
other buildings in Paris.
Created for 1889 Worlds Fair

7. Brooklyn Bridge
John Augustus and Washington
Augustus Roebling, NY, 1867-1883
•Greatest construction
achievement of era.
•Designer +11 workers
killed in its construction.
•Carries millions of people
each day.
•Roebling, German
Immigrant, had major
breakthrough in
suspension bridge
technology (web truss).

8. Realism: Social & Political Equality
• political context: Marxism
• Communist Manifesto (c. 1850)
– thesis: all history was history
of class struggles
– humanity’s relationship to
material wealth
• Darwin theory of evolution
• Comte: positivism…all
knowledge comes from
tested scientific proof

9. Tenement Interior in Poverty Gap, an English Coal Heaver’s Home, Jacob Riis, 1889.
Published study in NY called How the Other Half Lives
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZl4KXsaKVE

10. Realism – Cultural Context
– Role of Artist:
• no longer to simply reveal beautiful & sublime
• aimed to tell the truth
• not beholden to higher, idealized reality (i.e., God)
– Subjects:
• ordinary events and objects
• working class & broad panorama of society
• psychological motivation of characters

11. Realism in France: Courbet
The Stonebreakers, 1850
Miserable job; socialist ideals; Monumentality of everyday -Self educated artist, SALON REJECT …
“Show me an angel, and I’ll paint you one.” - hugely influential to Impressionists and Modern Art
Painting was destroyed in WWII so that is why image quality is so poor

12. Courbet’s The Burial at Ornans (c. 1850)
Huge scale = monumental, but not glorified. Earth tones,
everyday people. S curve composition. Unflattering pics of
provincial officials, dog and people are distracted.

13. Realism- Jean Francois Millet
• Millet (1814-75)
– theme: class distinction
• Peasantry v. urban
middle class
– allegory: religious
– Wanted to “make the trivial
seem sublime.”
– portrayal of nature:
• atmospheric qualities
• golden glow of sunlight

14. Millet’s The Gleaners (c. 1857)
•Barbizon School of
French painting
•Poorest of the
poor, picking up
scraps of grain
•Figures become
part of landscape
•Haystacks and
wagon reflect
shapes of gleaners
•Seen as socialist
painting

15. Rosa Bonheur’s Plowing on the Ninverais (c. 1850)
Influenced by Positivism.. Large canvas, virtues of simple country living in a
sweeping panorama… noted animal painter who fought for women’s rights

16. French Realism- Honore Daumier
• Soldiers killed
everyone in a
workers apt.
complex
• Illustrates 3
generations
murdered in
surprise attack
• Lithograph (print)
used to mass
produce image
• French government
tried to suppress
Rue Transomonain, Daumier, lithograph, 1834

17. Daumier’s Third Class Carriage (c. 1865)
Influence of William
Hogarth
Daumier was jailed for
satirizing king political
cartoon
Dignity of working class,
even though crammed
together in mass
transportation
1st piece showing
dehumanizing mass
transport

18. American Realism- Eakins the Anatomist
• Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)
– teacher: Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts
• taught anatomy to medical students & figure
drawing to art students
• disapproved of academic technique of drawing
from plaster casts
– used nude model
– allowed female students to study male nude
• Critics called him a “butcher” and “degrading”

19. Eakins’ Gross Clinic (c. 1875)
Triangular composition with
Baroque lighting
Eakins worked from photograph
of Dr. Gross (medical professor)
Celebrates advances in medical
science
Eakins was noted anatomist who
taught anatomy & figure drawing,
pioneered letting black and female
students study and draw nudes

20. Eakins vs. Rembrandt…

21. Henry O. Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson, 1893
•American realist taught by Eakins
•1st noted black painter
•Painterly brushwork,
monumental forms
•Dignity of exchange between
generations; answers ugly
stereotypes of African Americans
•Unsentimental yet affectionate

22. US Realism: Winslow Homer’s The Lifeline
•Homer
began as
freelance
illustrator
Spent a year
on N. Sea
Coast of
England
•Sketches of
an actual
event

23. Central Park, Frederick Las Olmstead and
Calvert Vaux, 1858-80, New York City
• 1st public park in US; contest held in late 1850s
• NYC population had tripled in recent years
• Designers created Romantic English landscape on swamps and bluffs
• Provided recreation and nature for city workers and immigrants

24. John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, 1988
•American portrait artist much
sought after in US and Europe
•This portrait caused a scandal in
the Paris salon of 1888
•Sargent moved to England and
painted quasi impressionist
•Captured personality of his
subjects
•Painterly brushwork, outstanding
capture of clothing/fashions

25. English – Pre-Raphaelites: the anti-Realists
• Dante Gabriel Rosetti - poet
& painter
• Returned to more Venetian
styles; influenced
Symbolism
• Medieval stories &
spirituality
“I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the
door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights
around the shore.”
The Roman Widow, Rosetti, 1848

27. English Realism/Romanticism – John Ruskin
• Published Modern Painters
In 1843– noted art critic
• Helped establish the career
of J.M.W. Turner and launch
the Pre-Raphaelite painters.
• Foreshadowed the Green
Movement: predicted
damage to environment
from Industrial Revolution.
• Art professor, critic, social
reformer, philosopher,
writer He believed that all great art should
communicate an understanding and
appreciation of nature.

28. English Realism – Arts and Crafts
• Ruskin - loss of fine craft
through Industrialization
• Movement leader: Morris,
ardent socialist, poet, artist
• Dehumanized factory labor;
loss of pride in work…
search for nature
• Female artisans in metal
working, textile arts, etc.
• Morris worked w/PRB artists
like Rosetti and Burne-Jones
Flora Tapestry, 1885, William Morris

29. US Arts and Crafts Movement
• In US,: home design, furniture,
and ceramics – still in use today
• Stickley furniture (Mission
Style) -buy today !
• Home Depot Authentic Mission Style Lighting Collection
• Simplicity, Honesty, Truth
• Emphasizing wood grain
Mission Media Cabinet, Walnut,
Target, Assembly Required,
$159.99

30. Realism co-
existed with
other art
movements like
the Pre-
Raphaelite
Brotherhood
and the tail end
of
Romanticism.
NADAR, Eugène Delacroix,
ca. 1855.
30

31. Edouard Manet - Realism
• Manet - Realist movement
• However, exhibited with Impressionists
• Luncheon on the Grass caused a scandal
although inspired by Giorgione
• Salon de les Refusés Exhibition
• Olympia scandalized Paris Salon

32. ÉDOUARD MANET, Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863. 32

33. 33

34. ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863. 34