Realism depicts reality as it is, with no drama or additional emotion. It is a movement that tries to limit the amount of artist interpretation. This movement aims to portray life in all its simplicity, including the commonplace and ugly, click here.
The message that appears to come from a painting that looks realistic is intended to reflect what actually happened at the time. In this style, the artist will manipulate compositional components to more clearly communicate an event’s truth without altering the meaning or scope.
In France in the middle 1800s, this painting style was born as a counter to the Romantic movements of the day. It was also during this period that photography began to develop. Gustave Courbet was a French artist who is widely regarded as the creator of realistic art. He is credited for the birth of this art style with his famous painting A Burial at Ornans. This depicts an 1848 funeral.
Others who have used the realism technique in their paintings include Jean Baptist Simeon Chardin (just to mention a couple), Charles-Francois Daubigny (just to name one), Francisco Goya (also known as Goya), Winslow Homer, Edward Manet and John Singer Sargent.
Other categories of realism can be divided into:
Sometimes the word naturism is used to mean realism. Paintings of actual subjects or events in their original settings.
Photo-Realism, or Hyper-Realism, pays extreme attention in displaying each and every tiny detail. End result may resemble a large, sharply focussed photograph.
Classical Realism (or Classical Realism) is a fairly modern movement which attempts to bring back the realist painting and craftmanship of early 20th Century artists. They rely on observation skills alone, without using any photography.
Fantastic Realism tries to combine the realist techniques of Old Master painters before 1828 with the religious symbolism.
In the 1930s, the Great American Financial Depression led to the rise of social realism. In order to accurately portray the injustice and struggles of this era, these pieces of art were created.