Essay Database

History of Art ‘Gods, heroes and patriots did not interest the realist painters.’ Compare and contrast works which represented realist ideas. The term realism was used with various meanings in the criticism of art but here we concentrate on its broadest sense; naturalism. Artists whose paintings were of the naturalist kind tried to depict things accurately and objectively in their paintings, they were against idealised beauty and mostly portrayed working class people in their typical …

…arms reflect strength and years of hard labour. The facial expressions on the child and woman, like Millet, are not important. It is the idea of family, of womanhood, of decent morality, which is important. Courbet, Millet and Daumier prepared the way for the beginning of the revolution, the creation of the later movement called impressionism via realism. These three artists’ paintings are not studies of specific individuals, they are studies of a social class.