Forward to 1.4.3.2 Barbizon School (1830-1875)
Back to 1.4.3 Realism and Barbizon index
Forward to Peredvizhniki and Abramtsevo Colony (1870 – 1890)
Realism was an artistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s, around the 1848 Revolution. Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century.
Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and the exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. Instead, it sought to portray real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy, and not avoiding unpleasant or sordid aspects of life.
The movement aimed to focus on unidealised subjects and events that were previously rejected in art work. [Source: Wikimedia commons]
[1431-43]
| The famously overwrought self-portrait The Desperate Man by the French Realist Gustave Courbet, remained in the artist’s studio until his death. In the modestly sized painting, the 24-year-old stares wild-eyed out at the viewer, his hands tearing at his flowing, unkempt hair. In his blousy white shirt and blue smock, Courbet here appears the quintessential Romantic artist—a tortured genius struggling for recognition and a bite to eat. (Source; artsy.net) |  Image source: artsy.net |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Desperate Man, The (Self-portrait) | 1843-5 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Courbet, Jean Désiré Gustave | 1819-1877, aged 58 | French painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-10] | |
| Private Collection | 45 x 55 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| At the end of summer 1849, Courbet started work on his first monumental painting. He wanted to make it his “statement of principle” and made this clear by calling the work Painting of Human Figures, the History of a Burial at Ornans. He took his inspiration from group portraits of Dutch civic guards in the 17th century while the sumptuous blacks recall Spanish art. The nuances of colour in the dark greens and dull greys produces an austere tone, the thick, robust technique gives the people and the natural elements density and weight. The rigorous frieze-like composition and the gaping grave strewn with bones invite us to think about the human condition. Courbet’s approach was radically innovative at the time: he used a canvas of dimensions usually reserved for history painting, a ‘noble’ genre, to present an ordinary subject, with no trace of idealisation, which cannot pretend to be a genre scene either. At the Salon in 1850-1851, many people decried ‘the ugliness’ of the people, and the ordinariness of the whole scene. Among the few admirers of the painting, one critic prophesied that it would remain ‘the Herculean pillars of realism in modern history’. The very subject of the painting has been reinterpreted. At first regarded as anticlerical, it was finally believed that, in a composition dominated by Christ on the cross, bringing together the clergy, a mayor and a Masonic judge, surrounded by men and women from all walks of life, it was the idea of ‘universal understanding’ which prevailed, a constant preoccupation in the 19th century and for the 1848 generation in particular. [Source: musee-orsay.fr] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Burial at Ornans | c1849 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Courbet, Jean Désiré Gustave | 1819-1877, aged 58 | French painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-11] | |
| Musée d’Orsay, Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris, France | 315 x 660 |
 Image source: tate.org.uk | Shakespeare was a favourite source for Victorian painters, and the tragic-romantic figure of Ophelia from Hamlet was an especially popular subject, featuring regularly in Royal Academy exhibitions. Arthur Hughes exhibited his version of her death scene in the same year as this picture was shown (Manchester City Art Gallery). Millais began the background in July 1851, at Ewell, Surrey. In accordance with the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he painted with close observation of nature. Millais quickly found, however, that such intense study was not without problems, and was moved to remark in a letter to Mrs Thomas Combe, My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced. The figure of Ophelia was added afterwards. The model, Elizabeth Siddal, a favourite of the Pre-Raphaelites who later married Rossetti, was required to pose over a four month period in a bath full of water kept warm by lamps underneath. The lamps went out on one occasion, causing her to catch a severe cold. Her father threatened the artist with legal action until he agreed to pay the doctor’s bills. The plants, most of which have symbolic significance, were depicted with painstaking botanical detail. [Source: tate.org.uk] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Ophelia | 1851-2 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Millais, Sir John Everett | 1829-1896, aged 66 | English painter London | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-12] | |
| Tate Galleries, Millbank, Westminster, London SW1P 4RG UK | 76 x 112 |
| This, Bonheur’s best-known painting, shows the horse market held in Paris on the tree-lined Boulevard de l’Hôpital, near the asylum of Salpêtrière, which is visible in the left background. For a year and a half Bonheur sketched there twice a week, dressing as a man to discourage attention. Bonheur was well established as an animal painter when the painting debuted at the Paris Salon of 1853, where it received wide praise. In arriving at the final scheme, the artist drew inspiration from George Stubbs, Théodore Gericault, Eugène Delacroix, and ancient Greek sculpture: she referred to The Horse Fair as her own ‘Parthenon frieze’. [Source: metmusuem.org] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Horse Fair, The | 1852-5 | Oil/Canvas | Animal Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Bonheur, Rosa | 1822-1899, aged 77 | French painter Paris | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-13] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 244 x 507 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | The enormous ‘Studio’ is without doubt Courbet’s most mysterious composition. However, he provides several clues to its interpretation: It’s the whole world coming to me to be painted, he declared, on the right, all the shareholders, by that I mean friends, fellow workers, art lovers. On the left is the other world of everyday life, the masses, wretchedness, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, people who make a living from death. In the first group, those on the right, we can recognise the bearded profile of the art collector Alfred Bruyas, and behind him, facing us, the philosopher Proudhon. The critic Champfleury is seated on a stool, while Baudelaire is absorbed in a book. The couple in the foreground personify art lovers, and near the window, two lovers represent free love. On the side of ‘everyday life’, we find a priest, a merchant, a hunter who somewhat resembles Napoleon III, and even an unemployed worker and a beggar girl symbolising poverty. We can also see the guitar, the dagger and the hat, which, together with the male model, condemn traditional academic art. In this vast allegory, truly a manifesto painting, each figure has a different meaning. And in the middle of all this stands Courbet himself, flanked by benevolent figures: a female muse, naked like the Truth, a child and a cat. In the centre, the painter presents himself as a mediator. [Source: musee-orsay.fr] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Studio of the Painter: A Real Allegory | 1855 | Oil/Canvas | Still Life |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Courbet, Jean Désiré Gustave | 1819-1877, aged 58 | French painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-14] | |
| Musée d’Orsay, Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris, France | 359 x 598 |
| Between the ages of 22 and 26, Edgar Degas completed his training in Italy, where part of his familly lived. Here he painted his father’s sister, Laure, with her husband, the baron Bellelli and her two daughters, Giula and Giovanna. The baron was an Italian patriot, banned from Naples, who lived an exile in Florence. His wife is in mourning for her father, Hilaire, who died recently and whose portrait appears on the framed redline painting close to his daughter’s face. In 1860, the two granddaughters, Giovanna and Giula, are 7 and 10. The mother is impressively dignified and affirms a slightly severe authority, contrasting with the relative aloofness of the father. This family portrait evokes those of Flemish painters, van Dyck in particular. Masterpiece of Degas’s early years, this portrait evokes the family tensions isolating each member of the family. The imposing dimensions, the sober colours, the structured games of open perspectives (doors and mirrors), all converge in strengthening a climate of oppression. [Source: musee-orsay.fr] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Bellelli Family, The | 1858-67 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Degas, Edgar | 1834-1917, aged 83 | French painter Paris | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-15] | |
| Musée d’Orsay, Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris, France | 200 x 253 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | The theme of horse racing is recurrent in Degas’s work, drawing its inspiration from the lifestyle of his contemporaries. This theme allowed him to tackle the traditional subject matter of the horse rider transposed into modernity. In the second half of the 19th century racecourses became very fashionable places for society where Paris bourgeois such as Degas shared their passion for this pursuit of aristocratic and British origin. Degas was also attracted by the theme for the opportunities it offered to study shapes and movement. He was also influenced by a variety of English artists specialised in horse race painting then highly successful, by equestrian representations by great masters such as Uccello, Gozzoli or Van Dyck, or by more contemporary artists like Vernet, Géricault or Meissonier. Dated circa 1866-1868, The Parade, also entitled Race Horses in front of the Tribunes, is one of the first paintings by Degas on this theme. [Source: musee-orsay.fr] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Parade, The | 1866-68 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Degas, Edgar | 1834-1917, aged 83 | French painter Paris | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-16] | |
| Musée d’Orsay, Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris, France | 46 x 61 |
 Image source: metmuseum.org | Returning to Philadelphia from Europe in 1870, Eakins began a series of representations of the sport of sculling, a subject for which he is uniquely identified. This is the first major work in that series of paintings and watercolors. It is believed to commemorate the victory of Max Schmitt, an attorney and skilled amateur rower, in an important race on the Schuylkill River in October 1870. Also an avid rower, Eakins depicted himself pulling the oars of a scull in the middle distance. [Source: metmuseum.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Max Schmitt in a Single Scull | 1871 | Oil | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Eakins, Thomas | 1844-1916, aged 71 | American painter Philadelphia | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-17] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 83 x 118 |
| Winslow Homer’s Snap the Whip first premiered to wide acclaim at America’s first world’s fair: the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia. At that time, the painting was already four years old and had gained quite a bit of interest locally. The agrarian imagery was particularly poignant at the World’s Fair against its overtly modern sensibilities. The post-Civil War work of Snap the Whip harkens to a wistful yearning for the simpler days of rural, agricultural life, as symbolized by the little red schoolhouse. Days before the Civil War tore at the fabric of American culture. In the aftermath of such an abominable war, the rise of city-based life encroached and suffocated the bucolic society that represented all that most Americans knew at that time. [Source: butlerart.com] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Snap the Whip | 1872 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Homer, Winslow | 1836-1910, aged 74 | American painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-18] | |
| Butler Institute of American Art, 524 Wick Ave, Youngstown, OH 44502, USA | 30 x 51 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | The Gross Clinic is recognized as one of the greatest American paintings ever made. The young and little-known Eakins created it specifically for Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition, intending to showcase his talents as an artist and to honor the scientific achievements of his native Philadelphia. Choosing the city’s world-famous surgeon and teacher Dr Samuel Gross as his subject, Eakins sets the scene in Jefferson Medical College’s surgical amphitheater. Dr Gross is shown leading a clinic of five doctors operating on the left thigh of a patient. At the same time Gross is demonstrating to students the relatively new surgical procedure he had developed to treat bone infections. In contrast to the recoiling woman to the left, traditionally identified as the patient’s mother, Gross embodies the confidence that comes from knowledge and experience. Casting himself as a witness, Eakins can be seen seated to the right of the tunnel railing, sketching or writing. [Source: philamuseum.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Gross Clinic, The | 1875 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Eakins, Thomas | 1844-1916, aged 71 | American painter Philadelphia | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-19] | |
| University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA | 240 x 220 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| Brandt, a painter of military campaigns and eastern European trail scenes in which horses serve as a recurring motif, distinguished himself as the leader of the ‘Munich school of Polish painters’, an informal band of realists of Polish origin active in Munich in the 1870s. In search of exotic subjects he frequently traveled eastward, visiting Ukraine and the European parts of Turkey. A consummate painter of horses, Brandt shows a procession of Tartar horseman proceeding across a grassy plain dotted with colorful wildflowers. The figure on a dapple horse in the central foreground, startled by something in the rushes at the right, halts, brandishes his rifle, and raises his hand to caution his companion. In the background, the rest of the group rides across the hill toward the two figures in the foreground. The horsemen wear bright red pants, boots, and turbans with feathers; the turban of the man on the dapple horse is a particularly brilliant saffron. Along with the rifles they carry, each has additional weapons around their waists, including bows and axes. The reins and saddles of the horses are embellished by beads and decorative metalwork. [Source: art.thewalters.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| On Reconnaissance | 1876 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Brandt, Jozef | 1841-1915, aged 74 | Polish painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-20] | |
| Walters Art Museum, 600 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201 USA | 48 x 114 |
| Manet depicts Road-menders in the Rue Mossnier, now the Rue de Berne, which was overlooked by Manet’s studio at 4 Rue de Saint-Pétersbourg. It was painted from an upstairs window. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| rue Mosnier aux Paveurs, La | 1878 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Manet, Édouard | 1832-1883, aged 51 | French painter Paris | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-21] | |
| Private Collection | 63 x 79 |
 Image source: publicdomainreview.org | In 1872, Leland Stanford, former governor of California and president of the Central Pacific Railroad, asked Eadweard Muybridge to photograph a horse galloping at full speed. This simple request, intended to confirm Stanford’s theory that all of the horse’s feet were off the ground simultaneously at some point during its stride, launched Muybridge on a lifelong pursuit to record animals in motion. He developed an ingenious method of stop-action photography: a battery of twenty-four cameras triggered either at timed intervals or as the horse’s legs tripped a wire suspended above the ground. The result was a sequence of discrete images representing postures previously invisible to the human eye. [Source: Metmuseum.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Attitudes of Animals in Motion, The | 1881 | Albumen silver | Animal Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Muybridge, Eadweard | 1830-1904,, aged 73 | British photographer | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-22] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 16 x 25 |
| The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit was painted in Paris in the autumn of 1882, one of a number of portraits of members of the American expatriate community that Sargent made in the French capital in the late 1870s and early 1880s. While the exact circumstances of this commission remain unknown, Sargent was a friend of the girls’ parents, Edward Darley Boit and Mary Louisa Cushing Boit. The parent supported his ambition to create something more unusual, a painting that is half a portrait and half an interior scene. Each of the girls is presented individually, but the features of two are obscured, an attribute antithetical to conventional portraiture and one that, combined with the lack of connection between the girls, stymied critics when the painting was first displayed. Its unusual format was inspired by the art of both the past and the present, a characteristic approach that Sargent employed to make paintings that seemed simultaneously traditional and modern. [Source: collections.mfa.org] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, The | 1882 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Sargent, John Singer | 1856-1925, aged 69 | American painter London | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-23] | |
| Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston USA | 223 x 223 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| Sargent’s monumental painting, based on drawings he made in southern Spain in 1879, is named for an Andalusian dance and is roughly translated as ‘the ruckus’. This is a painting you can hear as well as see: heels clicking, fingers snapping,hands clapping, the sounds of singing and guitars. Isabella Gardner’s elaborate setting for this painting features an alcove defined by a Moorish arch.The mirror on the left seems to extend the space, and the everyday objects placed casually on the floor in front continue the illusion that viewers are part of the painted scene—we have wandered into the tavern and become the audience for the performance. [Source: gardnermuseum.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| El Jaleo | 1882 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Sargent, John Singer | 1856-1925, aged 69 | American painter London | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-24] | |
| Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston | 237 x 352 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | This celebrated work is Édouard Manet’s last major painting, completed a year before he died, and exhibited in 1882 at the Salon. This would have been a startling painting for Salon visitors in many ways, not least because it seems to follow the traditional format of portraiture but does not name its subject. Indeed, the barmaid appears as just another item in the enticing array on offer in the foreground: wine, champagne, peppermint liqueur and British Bass beer, with its iconic red triangle logo. The background shows a fashionable crowd mingling on the balcony, entertained by musical and circus acts below. In the top left, a trapeze artist in green boots adds to the excitement. This animated scene is in fact a reflection in the large gold-framed mirror, which projects it into the viewer’s own space. Opened a decade or so earlier, the Folies-Bergère had rapidly become one of most popular music halls and places of entertainment in Paris. Manet frequented it with friends and made sketches on site. However, the final work was painted entirely in his studio, where a barmaid named Suzon came to pose. [Source: courtauld.ac.uk] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Bar at the Folies-Bergere, A | 1882 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Manet, Édouard | 1832-1883, aged 51 | French painter Paris | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-25] | |
| Courtauld Gallery, London UK | 96 x 130 |
| This is an oil painting by the Russian artist Ivan Kramskoi, painted in 1883. The model, whose identity is unknown, is a woman of ‘quiet strength and forthright gaze’. It is one of Russia’s best-known art works, although a number of critics were indignant when the painting was first exhibited and condemned what they saw as a depiction of a haughty and immoral woman. Its popularity has grown with changes in public taste. The painting hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, while an earlier version, also dated 1883, is housed at the Kunsthalle Kiel. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Unknown Woman, Portrait of an | 1883 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Kramskoi, Ivan Nikolevich | 1837 – 1887, aged 49 | Russian painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-26] | |
| State Tretyakov Gallery, Lavrushinsky Ln, 10, Moscow, Russia, 119018 | 76 x 99 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Madame Pierre Gautreau (the Louisiana-born Virginie Amélie Avegno) was known in Paris for her artful appearance. Sargent hoped to enhance his reputation by painting and exhibiting her portrait. Working without a commission but with his sitter’s complicity, he emphasized her daring personal style, showing the right strap of her gown slipping from her shoulder. At the Salon of 1884, the portrait received more ridicule than praise. Sargent repainted the shoulder strap and kept the work for over thirty years. When, eventually, he sold it to the Metropolitan, he commented, I suppose it is the best thing I have done, but asked that the Museum disguise the sitter’s name. [Source: metmuseum.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Madame X, Portrait of | 1884 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Sargent, John Singer | 1856-1925, aged 69 | American painter London | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-27] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 235 x 110 |
| Ilya Repin was a renowned Russian-Ukrainian realism painter. He had a long and successful career, credited with bringing attention to Russian art and culture. Repin was skilled at depicting real people in real situations and preferred to paint for moral and social purposes. While he did not normally paint historical pieces or ones with violence and bloodshed, Ivan the Terrible and his Son is a major exception. It is believed that Repin painted this piece as a rejection to violence and bloodshed. He was apparently inspired by the assassination of Alexander II as it caused him to reflect on other tragic events in Russia’s history. The painting was shown in 1885 at the 12th Itinerant’s Society Exhibition in St. Petersburg, of which he was a member for many years. [Source: ilyarepin.net] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Ivan the Terrible and his Son | 1885 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Repin, Ilya | 1844 – 1930, aged 86 | Russian painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-28] | |
| State Tretyakov Gallery, Lavrushinsky Ln, 10, Moscow, Russia, 119017 | 200 x 254 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | The inspiration for this picture came during a boating expedition Sargent took on the Thames at Pangbourne in September 1885, with the American artist Edwin Austin Abbey, during which he saw Chinese lanterns hanging among trees and lilies. He began the picture while staying at the home of the painter F D Millet at Broadway, Worcestershire, shortly after his move to Britain from Paris. At first he used the Millets’s five-year-old daughter Katharine as his model, but she was soon replaced by Polly and Dorothy (Dolly) Barnard, the daughters of the illustrator Frederick Barnard, because they had the exact haircolour Sargent was seeking. Dolly, aged eleven, is on the left; Polly, aged seven, is on the right. A sketchbook at the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, includes Sargent’s outline designs for the painting, and two drawings at the Tate Gallery record the precise poses he required for the girls’ profiles. [Source: tate.org.uk] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose | 1885-6 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Sargent, John Singer | 1856-1925, aged 69 | American painter London | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-29] | |
| Tate Galleries, Millbank, Westminster, London SW1P 4RG UK | 174 x 154 |
| Eight Bells depicts two sailors determining their boat’s position. It is one of Homer’s best known paintings, and the last of his major paintings of the 1880s that dramatically chronicles man’s relationship to the ocean. The Met also has the original copper plate for this print. The design relates to an oil painting, at the Addison Gallery of Art, Phillips Academy, Andover. [Source: winslowhomer.org] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Eight Bells | 1886 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Homer, Winslow | 1836-1910, aged 74 | American painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-30] | |
| Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover MA 01810 | 64 x 77 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Lady Agnew’s direct gaze and informal pose, emphasised by the flowing fabric and lilac sash of her dress ensure the portrait’s striking impact. Andrew Noel Agnew, a barrister who had inherited the baronetcy and estates of Lochnaw in Galloway, commissioned this painting of his young wife, Gertrude Vernon (1864-1932), in 1892. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1893 and made Sargent’s name. The sculptor Rodin described him as ‘the Van Dyck of our times’. Portrait commissions poured in and Sargent enjoyed something of a cult following in Edwardian society. It also launched Lady Agnew as a society beauty. [Source: nationalgalleries.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Lady Agnew of Lochnaw | c1892-3 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Sargent, John Singer | 1856-1925, aged 69 | American painter London | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-31] | |
| National Galleries of Scotland | 127 x 101 |
| Summer Evening on Skagen’s Southern Beach is a painting by Peder Severin Krøyer from 1893, and is counted as one of his masterpieces. Krøyer was one of the most notable members of the Danish artistic community known as the Skagen Painters. The works of Krøyer often emphasise the special effects of the Skagen light, with several memorable works depicting beach scenes. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Summer Evening on the Southern Beach | 1893 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Krøyer, Peter Severin | 1851 – 1909, aged 57 | Danish painter | Realism/Skagen |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-41] | |
| Skagens Museum, Brøndumsvej 4, 9990 Skagen, Denmark | 100 x 150 |
| Interior with a Girl at the Clavier: Hammershøi’s early works, with their simplicity and muted recording of the ‘banality of everyday life’, with subdued portraits and interiors, enjoyed critical acclaim. He was sought out by artists and literary figures of the time. |  |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Interior with a Girl at the Clavier | 1896 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Hammershøi, Vilhelm | 1864 – 1916, aged 51 | Danish painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-32] | |
| Private collection | 56 x 44 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | ‘The woman asleep on the couch is dreaming she has been transported into the forest, listening to the sounds from the instrument of the enchanter’, Rousseau wrote of this enigmatic painting. He sought to explain his insertion of a musician and a reclining female nude into a moonlit jungle full of exotic foliage and wildlife. The setting was inspired by his visits to Paris’s Jardin des Plantes, a combined botanical garden and zoo. The self-taught painter was a crucial precedent for Surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, who also relied on incongruous combinations and dream imagery to create mysterious, unforgettable pictures. [Source: moma.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Dream, The | 1910 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Rousseau, Henri | 1844-1910, aged 66 | French painter Paris | Realism/ Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-33] | |
| MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, USA | 204 x 298 |
| Bohemia in London centred on the Café Royal in lower Regent Street, a few steps from Piccadilly Circus. Renowned for its gaudy Second Empire décor, within thirty years of its opening in 1865, it had acquired a reputation as the meeting place for artists and literati. Orpen’s painting The Café Royal, 1912 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) is the definitive record of its heyday. [Source: sirwilliamorpen.com] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Café Royal in London | 1912 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Orpen, William | 1878 – 1931, aged 53 | Irish artist, London | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-34] | |
| Musée d’Orsay, Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris, France | 137 x 113 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Dempsey and Firpo, one of George Bellows’s most ambitious paintings, captures a pivotal moment in the September 14, 1923 prizefight between American heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and his Argentine rival Luis Angel Firpo. The frenzy lasted less than four minutes, Firpo going to the floor nine times and Dempsey twice. Although Dempsey was the eventual victor, the artist chose to represent the dramatic moment when Firpo knocked his opponent out of the ring with a tremendous blow to the jaw. At the match on assignment for the New York Evening Journal, Bellows portrays himself as a balding man at the extreme left of the picture. His geometrically structured composition also creates a low vantage point that includes the viewer: looking up at this angle, we find ourselves among the spectators pushing Dempsey back into the ring. The excitement is further heightened by the chromatic contrast between the fighters bathed in lurid light, and the dark, smoke-filled atmosphere around them. [Source: whitney.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Dempsey and Firpo | 1923-24 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Bellows, George Wesley | 1882 – 1925, aged 42 | American painter, NY | Realism/Ashcan |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-35] | |
| Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014, USA | 130 x 161 |
| According to Rafael Santos Torroella, one of the great Salvador Dalí scholars, between 1923 and 1926 the painter did at least a dozen portraits of his sister Anna Maria, including the two in the Museo Reina Sofía collection, Figura en una finestra (Figure at the Window) and Retrato (Portrait). After they were shown in 1925 at the Dalmau gallery, certain critics, including Folch i Torres, linked Dalí’s portraits to Catalan Noucentisme. According to Dalí himself in his book The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Picasso praised the pictures after his visit to the Dalmau gallery, and there is no doubt that they contain a certain echo of Picassian Classicism. Figura en una finestra is perhaps the absolute masterpiece of the series of portraits of Anna Maria. Rafael Santos Torroella stated that the painting is ‘a marvel for the skill with which it combines the occupied spaces and the empty spaces, giving them equal compositional importance to such an extent that the fact that he has simply eliminated one of the window casements (the left one) escapes the viewer, who does not even notice the anomaly, despite the fact that this is precisely where so much of the enigmatic beauty radiating from the painting, with its pure serenity, resides’. [Source:museoreinasofia.es] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Figure at the Window (Figura en una finestra) | 1925 | Oil/Ppr | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Dalí, Salvador | 1904-1989, aged 84 | Spanish painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-42] | |
| Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Calle de Santa Isabel, 52, 28012 Madrid, Spain | 105 x 75 |
 Image source: moma.org | House by the Railroad: A late-afternoon glow pervades Hopper’s House by the Railroad, which features a grand Victorian home, its base and grounds obscured by the tracks of a railroad. The tracks create a visual barrier that seems to block access to the house, which is isolated in an empty landscape. The juxtaposition of the house and the railroad tracks may be read as a confrontation between the fixity of tradition and the possibility of mobility in early-twentieth-century America. At the same time, these effects evoke the quiet yet charged atmosphere that would become a hallmark of this artist’s work. [Source: moma.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| House by the Railroad | 1925 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Hopper, Edward | 1882-1967, aged 84 | American painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-36] | |
| MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, USA | 61 x 74 |
| In this work, Hopper isolates the dramatic silhouette of a lighthouse against an open expanse of blue sky. Set on a rocky promontory in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, the architecture is bathed in bright sunlight offset by dark shadows. Standing proudly upright and seen from below, the Lighthouse at Two Lights seems to symbolise a resolute resistance, even refusal, to submit to change or nature. For Hopper, who had been summering in Maine since 1914, the lighthouse also signified a pleasurable reprieve from life in New York. [Source: metmuseum.org] |  Image source: metmuseum.org |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Lighthouse at Two Lights, The | 1929 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Hopper, Edward | 1882-1967, aged 84 | American painter | Social Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-37] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 110 x 75 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | This work resulted from a composite representation of several gasoline stations seen by the artist. The light in this painting, both natural and artificial, gives the scene of a gas station and its lone attendant at dusk an underlying sense of drama. But rather than simply depicting a straightforward narrative, Hopper’s aim was ‘the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature’. In this case, the loneliness of an American country road. Fellow artist Charles Burchfield believed these paintings would remain memorable beyond their time, because in his ‘honest presentation of the American scene . . . Hopper does not insist upon what the beholder shall feel’. [Source: moma.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Gas | 1940 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Hopper, Edward | 1882-1967, aged 84 | American painter | Social Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-38] | |
| MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, USA | 67 x 102 |
| Nighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is Hopper’s most famous work and is one of the most recognizable paintings in American art. Within months of its completion, it was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago for $3,000, and has remained there ever since. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Nighthawks | 1942 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Hopper, Edward | 1882-1967, aged 84 | American painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-39] | |
| Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago USA | 84 x 152 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Set in the stark landscape of coastal Maine, Christina’s World depicts a young woman seen from behind, wearing a pink dress and lying in a grassy field. Although she appears to be in a position of repose, her torso, propped on her arms, is strangely alert; her silhouette is tense, almost frozen, giving the impression that she is fixed to the ground. She stares at a distant farmhouse and a group of outbuildings, ancient and grayed in harmony with the dry grass and overcast sky. Wyeth’s neighbor Anna Christina Olson inspired the composition, which is one of four paintings by Wyeth in which she appears. As a young girl, Olson developed a degenerative muscle condition—possibly polio—that left her unable to walk. She refused to use a wheelchair, preferring to crawl, as depicted here, using her arms to drag her lower body along. ‘The challenge to me’, Wyeth explained, ‘was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless’. The high level of detail Wyeth gave to every object in his paintings encourages intense inspection, but his titles reveal the inner significance of their outwardly straightforward subjects. The title Christina’s World, courtesy of Wyeth’s wife, indicates that the painting is more a psychological landscape than a portrait, a portrayal of a state of mind rather than a place. [Source: moma.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Christina’s World | 1948 | Tmpr/Gesso | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Wyeth, Andrew | 1917-2009, aged 91 | American painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1431-40] | |
| MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, USA | 82 x 121 |
| In Master Bedroom, Wyeth presents the family dog, Rattler, asleep, curled up and snuggled into the pillows of a four poster bed. Wyeth’s granddaughter, Victoria, said in an interview that the artist had ‘come home tired one evening, wanting to take a nap, only to find Rattler had got there first’. She went on to quote Wyeth, ‘You know, dogs are the damnedest thing. They just take over the house’. While the title suggests we are in the bedroom of the home’s owner, it is also a sly nod to the real master of the house – the dog. [Source: theartstory.org] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Master Bedroom | 1965 | Wtrclr/Paper | Still Life |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Wyeth, Andrew | 1917-2009, aged 91 | American painter | Realism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | ||
| Private collection | 46 x 63 |
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Back to 1.4.3 Realism and Barbizon index
Forward to Peredvizhniki and Abramtsevo Colony (1870 – 1890)