Popular Painting Styles – Realism Painting

Realism is a painting style that depicts the world as it really appears, without adding drama or emotions. The artist is kept to the bare essentials in this movement. It is the idea to show life as it exists in nature, which includes mundane things and the everyday.

The Tingology Class will convey a message that is a result of the actual events that took place at that moment. The artist can manipulate the compositional elements to better communicate the reality of an event, without altering its scope or meaning.

The mid-1800s saw the emergence of this style in France, as a response to the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. During this period, photography was also developing. Gustave Courbet, a French artist, is considered the father of realistic art. The famous A Burial in Ornans depicts a funeral for a relative that took place in 1848. It is generally considered to be the painting which started this style.

Some of the other notable artists who used realism techniques include: Jean Baptist Simeon Chardin; Charles-Francois Daubigny; Francisco Goya; Winslow-Homer; Edward Manet and John Singer Sargent.

Other subcategories in realism are:

The term “naturist” is often used in conjunction with the term “realism”. The natural setting of real subjects is used to paint them.

Photo-Realism and Hyper-Realism pay extreme attention to displaying every detail accurately. It can look like a sharply-focused, enlarged photograph.

Classical Realism, a modern art movement, aims to restore the painting techniques and workmanship of artists from before 20th Century. The artists rely solely on their skills of observation without using photography.

Fantastic Realism is a style that combines the techniques of old masters painters, who painted before 1828, with religious symbolism.

The Great Depression in the United States of America of 1930s was the catalyst for the birth of Social Realism. These works were intended to depict in a realistic manner the terrible struggles and injustices of that time.

Romantic Realism is a style of art that renders subjects in a realistic manner, but allows for the addition of possibilities based on romantic ideologies.