Realism Painting

The second half of the 19th century has been called the positivist age. It was an age of faith in all knowledge which would derive from science and scientific objective methods which could solve all human problems.

In the visual arts this spirit is most obvious in the widespread rejection of Romantic subjectivism and imagination in favor of Realism - the accurate and apparently objective description of the ordinary, observable world, a change especially evident in painting.Positivist thinking is evident in the full range of artistic developments after 1850- from the introduction of realistic elements into academic art, from the emphasis on the phenomenon of light, to the development of photography and the application of new technologies in architecture and constructions.

Realism sets as a goal not imitating past artistic achievements but the truthful and accurate depiction of the models that nature and contemporary life offer to the artist. The artificiality of both the Classicism and Romanticism in the academic art was unanimously rejected, and necessity to introduce contemporary to art found strong support. New idea was that ordinary people and everyday activities are worthy subjects for art. Artists - Realists attempted to portray the lives, appearances, problems, customs, and mores of the middle and lower classes, of the unexceptional, the ordinary, the humble, and the unadorned. They set themselves conscientiously to reproduce all to that point ignored aspects of contemporary life and society - its mental attitudes, physical settings, and material conditions.

Realism in France appears after the 1848 Revolution. In France it expresses a taste for democracy. At the same time in England artists - Realists came before the public with the reaction against the Victorian materialism and the conventions of the Royal Academy in London.

In spite of its social inclinations Realism produces no new style in architecture and few valuable sculptures.It was the time of introduction of new technologies in constructions. The revolutionary modular construction and largest spans in structural skeleton that could then be mass-produced - used on exhibition halls, railway stations; the use of cast iron as building material and invention of twisted-wire cable that extended main spans of bridges in Europe and United States. Less positive attitude toward technological progress can be seen in the first attempts to incorporate structural iron into architecture proper.

The Realists (1800 - 1899)
This is a group of international artists in Paris which begin to devise new methods of pictorial representation. They are focused on scientific concepts of vision and the study of optical effects of light.The Realists express both a taste for democracy and rejection of the inherent old artistic tradition. The Realists felt that painters should work from the life round them. Indisputable honest, the Realists desecrated rules of artistic propriety with their new realistic portrayals of modern life. Artists: Marie Rosalie Bonheur, Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Thomas Eakins, Ignace Henri Theodore Fantin-Latour, Wilhelm Leibl, Edouard Manet.