KEY ARTISTS:
Courbet, Daumier & Millet
KEY MEANINGS:
Depictions of men/women (portraits/figures etc.)
Work
Contemporary Events
Modernity
Conflict & Suffering
KEY CONTEXTS:
Technological
The technological context of the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION had an impact on several aspects of the French society.
Newspapers were important in spreading information to the working class – daily paper established in Paris in 1830s.
Photography was invented in 1839, encouraging artists to paint Realistic subjects in their visible world with objectivity.
Newspapers were important in spreading information to the working class – daily paper established in Paris in 1830s.
Photography was invented in 1839, encouraging artists to paint Realistic subjects in their visible world with objectivity.
Economic |
Political |
Social |
Philosophical |
The Industrial Revolution made it more difficult for the poor.
By the 1850s, France saw less than 50% of its population making their living from agriculture, forestry or fishing. Many impoverished working class families were forced to find factory work in the cities. There was a significant increase of mass production and manufacturing, bringing wealth to the middle class factory owners. However, workers' wages remained low and they kept living in poverty. |
The Industrial Revolution brought changes to the social order as the middle class gained prominence while the new lower class of industrial workers was formed.
The July Revolution of 1830 was followed by the workers' strikes for the next three years. In 1834, Louis Philippe responded by restricting the press, and Parisian workers rioted against the forced closure of a radical newspaper. There were physical conflicts that led to many being killed on the street and in their homes (see Daumier’s "Rue Transnonain" April 15, 1834). |
No more social unity seen in Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People'. The social division and imbalance became apparent as the emergence of the middle class continued while working and living conditions worsened for the working class.
Realist artists who empathized with the working class people reacted against the Salon, which reinforced a hierarchical structure in art similar to what was happening in the French society. |
Marx’ & Engels’ Communist Manifesto was published in 1848.
It argued that the middle class now merely replaced the monarchy with their newly elevated status and wealth gained from the Industrial Revolution. The work that began in 1789 for an equal society, could only be truly completed when economic equality was achieved across the social classes. Information was circulated in newspapers and socialism started to grow as a movement and became an influence on the Realist artists. |
The Effects of Industrial Revolution |
What Is Socialism? |
Realism In Short |
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More about THE SALONIt was the only gateway for artists to showcase their work. It could 'make or break' an artist's career.This gave tremendous power to the Salon jury. It also meant that the French monarchy could easily censor what they did not want the public to see.
It was either their way, or no way.To be accepted, artists had to produce art works that adhered to the artistic taste of the Salon juries, which only favoured certain subjects and styles, mainly that of Neoclassicism and Romanticism.
Are you an aspiring artist?
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Gustave Courbet, Self-Portrait: The Desperate Man, 1843–45.
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REALIST ARTISTGustave Courbet (1819-1877)Courbet was born in 1819 in the small rural town of Ornans. At fourteen, he took lessons from a minor Neoclassical painter, which likely gave him a foundation to react against.
The Heart of a Rebel Gustave Courbet set out to build an art on commonplace scenes. His painting was concerned with the present, not the past; with the momentary, not the permanent; with bodies, not souls; with the material, not the spiritual. His nudes were no nymphs or goddesses, but models who posed in his studio. He set out himself the goal of: “rendering the customs, ideas and appearance of my era as I perceive them; to be not only a painter, but also a man; in short to create a living art.” • He wanted to show life as it really was – to paint the people for the people • His innovative painting technique challenged the existing institutional relationship between art and the public (The Salon) • He was jailed for 6 months for vandalizing a Napoleonic monument Doing Everything Wrong According to the Salon Standards Courbet's Realism was most inspired by his distaste for strictures of the French Academy. He rejected Classical or Romantic treatments and instead took humble scenes of country life - subjects usually considered the stuff of minor genre painting, and made them material for great history painting. For this he gained huge notoriety. His art was not overtly political, but in the context of the time, he was not ignored as he expressed ideas of equality by heroicizing ordinary individuals, painting them at great scale and refusing to hide their imperfections. In the process of clearing away the rhetoric of Academy painting, Courbet often settled on compositions that seemed collaged and crude to prevailing sensibilities. At times he also abandoned careful modelling in favour of applying paint thickly in broken flecks and slabs.
Pioneering the Wave of Change
Such stylistic innovations made him greatly admired by later modernists that promoted liberated compositions and amplified surface texture. Instead of being completely reliant on the state-run Salon system, Courbet pioneered the solo retrospective as a private commercial venture, by setting up his own Pavilion of Realism: an approach that many later renegade artists followed. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/courbet-gustave/ |
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REALIST ARTISTHonoré Daumier (1808-1879)The Michelangelo of Caricature
One of the major influence on Realism was the explosion of socially critical journalism and caricature at the beginning of the July Monarchy (1830-48). Though the authoritarian reign of Louis Phillippe would end in overthrow, the first five years of his rule allowed greater freedom of the press. It was in this moment that Honoré Daumier began publishing caricatures critical of the monarchy, such as the lithograph Gargantua (1831), in which he mockingly depicted the king as the gluttonous giant of Francois Rabelais's 1534 novel. Despite being imprisoned for six months for his negative depiction of the king as Gargantua, he continued to create the Realist lithograph Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834, which showed the brutal aftermath of a massacre of working-class innocents by the French government. The work was considered so powerful and dangerous to the monarchy that Louis-Philippe sent men to purchase as many copies as possible to be destroyed. Daumier would continue painting and engraving for several decades, producing socially focused works such as Third-Class Carriage (1862-64). On the Side of the Poor Forced to quit school at the age of 12, Daumier developed a life-long sympathy for the poor. He only caricaturized the middle-class and particularly liked criticizing lawyers and the justice system. After having worked as an assistant to a bailiff, he had a particular distaste for lawyers. An extremely productive artist, he made almost 4,000 prints advocating for the poor before going blind. Unfortunately, he sympathized so much with them that he died in debt and was buried in a pauper's grave. He was also a talented painter and sculptor, but these works mainly became known after his death. Daumier's Techniques Engraving, which could be reproduced and disseminated in the press, enabled Daumier to circulate his critical compositions. The medium of lithography allows for quick, sketchy, images, which create a sense of movement - and also a sense of a candid moment. Critics described him as a master at recording the unrehearsed moments of daily life. Daumier came to painting - and naturalism - fairly late in his life. He used everyday subjects to provoke discussion about wider social issues. He also tried his hand at sculpting, which was not a popular form of art at the time. His sculptures are known for being remarkably life-like. http://www.theartstory.org/movement-realism.htm |
REALIST ARTISTJean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) Jeon-Francois Millet was born into a poor farming family and found city life alienating and inhuman, particularly as the Industrial Revolution ground on, pulling people from rural areas into the cities.
Millet moved permanently to Barbizon with his family to flee the cholera epidemic of 1849. His paintings began to be accepted by the Salon after 1847, although some saw them as too political and socialist, and he received a first class medal and the Legion of Honour from the art jury of the Great Exhibition of Paris in 1867. He shared other Realists’ compassion for the working class people. Millet’s peasant figures were: • Generalised into large, semi-sculptural forms, dominating the foreground of a deep landscape • Thrown into eminence against the sky • Symbolic of our universal union with the earth • Representative of the nostalgia felt for the rural, simple way of life compared to the effects of industry felt in the city • Shown to live within the cycle of seasons – from birth to return to the soil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Millet |