Realism

=** Realism **=

Chris Brown
Realism was an artistic movement that attempted to depict everyday life in its purest form. Realists rejected the embellished, idealistic art of the past and used detail in an attempt to be absolutely true to the object depicted. This picture shows a typical realism painting by Eilif Peterssen- Laksefiskeren. This picture shows a man in a small boat using a gillnet to catch fish. The picture is clearly a realistic painting because the artist is trying to paint exactly what he sees in real life.

One of the most well known artists during the realism movement was Diego Velasquez from Spain. He finished his apprenticeship at age 18 and spent many years traveling and studying paintings in Italy. Later in his life he was made the chamberlain of the Spanish palace. With this new job he painted the Spanish Monarchy and other requests from the king.This painting is by the Spanish artist Diego Velasquez and is clearly realistic because of the great detail and likeness to reality.

The Realist movement often chose to paint common, ordinary, sometimes ugly images rather than the, conventional pictures favored by the upper-class. This was an different from the traditional approach to Neoclassicism and the drama of Romanticism. Also, advocates of the style were no longer preoccupied with the expectations of the Salons and Academies. Realists strived to paint things as they actually appeared. Often the artists depicted common subjects that had a social, political, or moral message.

The realism movement was started by the industrial revolution. Artists no longer wanted to paint optimistic paintings that depicted the the up class but instead they wanted to show the suffering and hardship of the working class. Realism like Romanticism wasn't confined only to art. It spread into literature and theater. In literature writers focused on the stories of the people of the working class and not the upper class that they had focused on for a long time before. In theater plays were written about the lower classes for the lower classes. This change in art philosophy happened because the many artists saw what was going on around them and found this much more interesting than the optimistic style of Romanticism

Realism had an impact on the 19th century because it exposed the wealth upper class to the horrors that the lower class faces everyday. It also helped give the lower class a voice. Realism also gained popularity due to the urban setting because many people wanted to see what was really happening in there city and not how the artist think things should be.

"Diego Velásquez." //World History: The Modern Era//. ABC-CLIO, 2009. Web. 27 Sept. 2009. .
"Realism."__Wordwide Arts Resources.__Sun 05 Feb 2006  S.E. Woodson."Realism & Naturalism."__Herberger Online.__ 20th Sep. 2009.