Realism
Chapter 24-4
Characteristics of Realism
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Belief that Literature and Art should depict life
as it really was
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Something of a reaction to the failed revolutions
of 1848-49 and loss of idealism
Remember…Romanticism was highly idealistic
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Realism in Literature
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France: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
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The Human Comedy: depicts urban society as
grasping, amoral, brutal (characterized by Darwinian
struggle for wealth and power
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
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Madame Bovary: portrays the provincial middle class
as petty, smug, hypocritical
Realism in literature
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France continued
Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Germinal: showed the hard life of young miners
in southern France
Portrayed the seemy, animalistic view of
working-class life
Realism in Literature: England
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George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) 1819-1880
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Examined the ways that people are shaped by their
class as well as their inner strivings, conflicts, moral
choices
Tomas Hardy (1840-1928)
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Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Portrayed a woman who was
ostracized for having premarital sex
Realism in Literature: Russia
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Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
The greatest Russian Realist
Fatalistic view of history BUT regarded love,
trust, family ties as life’s enduring values
War and Peace: Story of Russian Society during the
Napoleonic Wars
Realism in Literature: Scandinavia
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Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Father of Modern Drama
His plays examined the conditions of life and
issues of morality…often at odds with the
Victorian views of the day
Realism in Art
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The most important artists of the 19th and 20th
centuries created art for art’s sake
This includes the Romantic Period
 Did not rely on patrons but sold their work to the
public
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Remember: Renaissance and Baroque did depend
on patrons: Church, nobility
Realism in Art
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continued
France was still the center of the art world
Artists sent their work to the Paris Salon to be
judged by a distinguished panel
Realists did not idealize life: portrayed life as it
really was
Ordinary folk became the subjects of many
paintings
Sometimes work rejected by the Salon because it
was too mundane
Gustave Courbet coined the term,
“realism” The Stone Breakers
Francios Millet The Gleaners
Honore Daumier Third Class
Carriage
Edgar Degas Laundry Girls Ironing
Edouard Manet
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Considered the first modernist painter
Bridged realism to impressionism
Portrayal of female nudes was shocking!
Luncheon on the Grass: park setting. Female nude
and two clothed males
Olympia: casual nude portrayal of a prosttitute
Manet
Manet