Realist art
Taken literally, art is not inherently realistic because it is filtered through the subjective perception of the artist. However, that has not stopped many artists from trying to render their subjects as realistically as possible. Since the school of Realism debuted in the middle of the 19th century, Realists have eschewed trying to make their works deliberately pretty and instead have used their art to capture the world as it actually is.
History
Though there had been artists whose paintings looked realistic for centuries, Realism was only identified as an organized movement in the middle of the 19th century. The leading proponent of Realism was French painter Gustave Courbet. He saw Realism as a rebellion against the Classical and Romantic schools of art and used his paintings to portray contemporary issues of inequality and hardship, subjects that audiences would not normally want to see.
Style
Nineteenth-century Realism tended to focus on subjects that audiences would encounter in everyday life. While the then-contemporary Neoclassicism tried to capture the lofty grandeur of ancient cultures and Romanticism tried to augment the aesthetic experience of the art, the Realist painters would paint more sordid subjects like working-class struggles, criminal activities and funeral processions. Realists would paint with as much detail as they could, leaving out no hard, sordid facts in their representation.
Artists
Courbet was the leading proponent of Realism, but many artists also used his principles. Famous realist painters of the 19th century included Rosa Bonheur, Henri Fantin-Latour, Anders Zorn, Carl Larsson and Thomas Eakins. Early works of Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas also were considered Realist art, but they eventually would become affiliated with the Impressionist movement. They still focused on subjects from the urban world, but painted them with a less detailed and individually stylized approach.
Legacy in Visual Art
Realism did not replace Romanticism as the most popular style of art, but its works and principles would strongly influence subsequent generations of artists. Though Impressionism and later Expressionism lacked the emphasis on objective detail, those movements continued Realism's focus on people and settings from the modern world. And the early 20th century movement of avant-garde would adapt the social awareness of the original realists, though avant-garde artists would favor innovation and creativity over exact representation.
Legacy in Other Mediums
Realism also was discussed in terms of theater, literature and even music. Writers such as Honore' de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert would bring the frank and even sordid tone of Realist art to their prose. Instead of trying for larger-than-life melodrama, they would try to capture people's everyday trials and tribulations to their most base details. Realist novels like Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" were considered controversial and in cases obscene, which cemented the appeal of this approach to fiction.
