Realism

Paper Summary:

This paper explains how the poverty and despondency amongst the new working class created by Europe's industrial revolution was expressed in the artistic form of Realism. The paper looks at how Realism sought to correctly portray the conditions and hardships of the poor with the hope of improving their living situations. The paper discusses some of the Realist artists of that era and describes how their works depicted the reality in the cities and countryside.

From the Paper:

"To Courbet, Realism was not so much a style of painting as a philosophy. His arguments with the present French art establishment concerned subject matter, not painting technique. Juries and the public shunned the Realists' work, because the art style broke away from the official Academic art. Courbet's paintings, such as the Stone-Breakers of 1849, which featured the laboring, faceless figures of an old man and adolescent boy, was criticized severely by critics who preferred mythological or idealistic subjects."

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