REALISM

The Realist movement began after the 1848 Revolution in France with artists such as Gustave Courbet and Honoré Daumier depicting common labourers in naturalistic scenes as a reaction to  the idealisation of both Romanticism and Neo-Classicism. Charcoal and graphite, which had always played a role in preparatory drawings, now assumed greater importance, used as if to coat the images in soot and grime. Daumier’s watercolours of first-, second- and third-Class railway carriages are particularly memorable, not least because it is the second-class passengers who look most unhappy while the ones in third-class seem resigned to their fate. The North American Winslow Homer, who studied in Paris in the 1860s, took the Realists’ ideas back home but himself employed a brighter palette to create scenes which spoke of affection rather than anger.