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The Realism Period
The realism period started as an opposition to the Romantic period where imagination and subjectivism were key. Realists focused on objective observation of the world around them, including everyday occurrences and people. -
Fur Elise - Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was well into his career and almost completely deaf when he wrote his famous piano piece. Though the title of the piece comes from a discovered manuscript signed by Beethoven and dedicated to Elise, it has since been lost https://www.thoughtco.com/fur-elise-by-ludwig-van-beethoven-724192 -
Wivenhoe Park - John Constable
Constable is famous for his landscapes, which are mostly of the Suffolk countryside. He made many open-air sketches, using these as a basis for his large exhibition paintings, which were worked up in the studio. His pictures are extremely popular today, but they were not particularly well received in England during his lifetime. He did, however, have considerable success in Paris.
National Gallery, London
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/john-constable -
La Comedie Humaine - Honore de Balzac
The Human Comedy) is the title of Honoré de Balzac's (1799–1850) multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration (1815-1830) and the July Monarchy (1830–1848), consisting of 91 finished works and 46 unfinished works. His title indicates the worldly, human concerns of a realist novelist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Com%C3%A9die_humaine -
Gargantua - Honore Daumier
Honore Daumier was a French painter, sculptor and printmaker during the mid-nineteenth century. Although an accomplished artist in several media, Daumier is most well-known for his political caricatures and satirical art. He was also a key figure in the painterly movement of French Naturalism.
http://www.theartstory.org/movement-realism.htm -
Giselle - Adolphe Adam, Jean Coralli, and Jule Perrot
Ballets about everyday people, real places, real time, the historical past, and the supernatural took prominence in the 19th century. The ballet is about a peasant girl named Giselle, who dies of a broken heart after discovering her lover is betrothed to another. The Wilis, a group of supernatural women who dance men to death, summon Giselle from her grave. They target her lover for death, but Giselle's great love frees him from their grasp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giselle -
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary was the first major work to fully embrace the realist style. It provided a frank, true-to-life portrayal of a woman seeking to escape her boring life through romantic involvements. This was shocking to readers of its day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Bovary -
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace, epic historical novel, originally published as Voyna i mir in 1865–69. This study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as one of the world’s greatest novels. It has been widely adapted for the stage, film, and television.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/War-and-Peace -
Sleep - Gustave Coubert
Oil on canvas - Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
Courbert's interest in an erotic Realism became prevalent in his later work. Raw eroticism is delivered without aid of cupids or mythological justification of any kind, making this work vulgar to those with the prevailing taste of the day.
http://www.theartstory.org/movement-realism.htm -
Breakfast in the Studio (the Black Jacket) - Eduoard Manet
Manet is credited with popularizing the technique of alla prima painting. Rather than build up colors in layers, he would immediately lay down the hue that most closely matched the final effect he sought. His loose handling of paint, and his schematic rendering of volumes, led to areas of "flatness" in his pictures.
New Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-manet-edouard.htm -
Portrait of the Artist's Mother - James Whistler
Anna McNeill Whistler is clothed in a long black dress with a simple white lace cap, seated in profile, steadily gazing ahead, and holding a white handkerchief in her lap. The arrangement of forms appears simple when in fact there is a careful balancing of shapes at play. In 1891 the painting became the first American work to be purchased by the French government.
Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-whistler-james-abbott-mcneill.htm -
Jeanne D’Arc - Emmanuel Fremiet
Jeanne d'Arc is a gilded bronze equestrian sculpture of Joan of Arc by Emmanuel Frémiet inaugurated in 1874.The original statue was commissioned by the French government following the defeat of the country in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. It is the only public commission of the French state during the period 1870-1914.
https://beenaps.com/es/jeanne-darc-fremiet-paris1237013/ -
Swan Lake - Pytor Tchaikovsky
Ballet composed in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular of all ballets, still being performed today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake -
A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
Ibsen is often called "the father of modern drama" because he helped popularize realism. A Doll's House was very controversial when first published and performed. The play is about the unravelling of a family, and is critical of 19th century norms, having its protagonist mother/wife leave her husband.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/aug/10/dolls-house-henrik-ibsen-relevant -
Little Dancer Aged 14 - Edgar Degas
Degas first made a reddish-brown wax sculpture in the nude. Then, dressed it in clothing made of real fabrics. When the wax sculpture was first exhibited, contemporaries were shocked by the unprecedented realism of the piece. But were also moved by the representation of the pain and stress of ballet training. After Degas’ death, his heirs decided to make bronze casts of the wax original.http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/degas-little-dancer-aged-fourteen-n06076 -
The Thinker - Auguste Rodin
This image of a man lost in thought, but whose powerful body suggests a great capacity for action, has became one of the most celebrated sculptures ever known. Numerous casts exist worldwide, including the one now in the gardens of the Musée Rodin, a gift to the City of Paris installed outside the Panthéon in 1906, and another in the gardens of Rodin’s house in Meudon, on the tomb of the sculptor and his wife.
http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/collections/sculptures/thinker -
The Natural History Museum - London
Museum of natural history that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. Work began in 1873 and was completed in 1880. The new museum opened in 1881, although the move from the old museum was not fully completed until 1883. Both the interiors and exteriors of the Waterhouse building make extensive use of terracotta tiles to resist the sooty climate of Victorian London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_History_Museum,_London -
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Known as one of the Great American Novels, this novel is written in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. Set in Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, this story is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn -
Home Insurance Company Building - William Jenney
Generally considered to be the world’s first tall building supported by an internal frame, or skeleton, of iron and steel rather than by load-bearing walls and the first to incorporate steel as a structural material. The Home Insurance Company Building also set the pace for the Chicago school style of architecture.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Le-Baron-Jenney -
La Boheme - Giacomo Puccini
Puccini's La Bohème, the passionate, timeless, and indelible story of love among young artists in Paris, can stake its claim as the world’s most popular opera. La Bohème is the definitive depiction of the joys and sorrows of love and loss; on closer inspection, it reveals the deep emotional significance hidden in the trivial things—a bonnet, an old overcoat, a chance meeting with a neighbor—that make up our everyday lives.
https://www.metopera.org/Season/2016-17-Season/boheme-puccini -
The Stars and Stripes Forever - John Philip Sousa
A patriotic American march widely considered to be the magnum opus of composer John Philip Sousa. By a 1987 act of the U.S. Congress, it is the official National March of the United States of America. -
Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment - Augustus Saint-Gaudens
The Shaw Memorial remains one of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens' most stirring and celebrated masterpieces and is considered by some to be America's greatest public monument Plaster original.
https://www.nps.gov/saga/learn/historyculture/the-shaw-memorial.htm
