Realism

Question 1

what were the aims of Realism?

Answer 1

attempt to represent subject matter truthfully
rejected idealisation,focused on everyday life
rejected romanticism
revolted against exotic subject matter, exaggerated emotionalism drama of romanticism

Question 2

what are characteristics of realism?

Answer 2

portray real and typical comporary people
doesn’t avoid unpleasant or sordid images
often reflected changes wrought by industrial and commercial revolutions
paint the ordinary events in the lives of working class people
show the difficult lot of the poor
often socialist
moved away from idealism,heroism and academician
contemporary French life, landscape and experiences of ordinary people
pearsant or working class became significant
artists challenged the escapism of romantics
subject matter: harsh naturalistic landscape as actual events and rituals personal experience and ugly honest images
often had political undertones.

Question 3

who painted the stonebreakers?

Answer 3

Gustave Courbet

Question 4

give the background of stonebreakers?

Answer 4

two ordinary peasant workers
painted without any apparent sentiment
One too young for labor and the other too old
Express hardship and exhaustion
Shows sympathy for the workers and disgust for the working class
Painted the men with dignity

Question 5

Give analysis of the Stonebreakers

Answer 5

routine action the two men in their job
the lighting is beautifully crafted with great value and spots of luminosity
looking at the lighter part of the values and the lower part of the man’s face, the eye is then directed toward the brighter part of the man’s hands
brings awareness to the texture of the working man’s hand detail with dirt and hard linear lines
This scene illustrates these characters as heroes through the lighting scheme
he later brought the two men to his studio to complete the painting

Question 6

who painted the Gleaners?

Answer 6

Jean-Francois Millet

Question 7

analyse the Gleaners

Answer 7

3 peasant women stooping to glean the last scraps of a wheat harvest
their gaze do not meet the viewer and their faces are obscured
In the background beautiful amounts of wheat are stacked while a landlord overseer stands watch on the right
Millet has chosen to center the woman and paint them with great contrast
the earthy figures blend into the colour of the piece ingraining them well into the scene
Through misalignment of vanishing points among the three women.Millet conveys the message that while the lower-class woman occupy the same space as the abundance in the background they will never be part of it
They occupy their own space layered on top of another space in the painting and real life
This is the commentary on lower-class inability for upward mobility