Realism- Art

In the 19th century of the Realism there was an era of big politics, scientific and cultural changes that changed the art of painting. Artists from the official academy and salon chose to liberate themselves from classical themes and styles and explored a vast new world. It was the era of Realism, Romanticism and Orientalism. It was the time of the plein-air (in the open air) painting and traveller artists.



This is one of the central figures Courbet Gustav. In the middle nineteenth-century, Courbet's art caused much of a disagreement at the state sponsored salon because it went against standard academic practice.

A Burial at Ornans
1849-50; Oil on Canvas, 314 x 663 cm (10'' 3 1/2'' x 21' 9''); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Here Courbet gathered together fifty-one men, and children on the grounds of the new, and painted on a huge canvas almost 22 feet long. The mourners include the artist's father and, the town mayor, Courbet's late grandfather, and a spotted dog. 

No one in the picture is paying much attention to either the coffin or the future resting place of the deceased. The crowd is composed in three discrete groups -women mourners at right, clergy and pall bearers at left, and a bourgeois (belongings) and mongrel dog at center right that are compositionally and emotionally disconnected from each other and the funeral ritual. 

The postures and expressions of rapt piety among the mourners in Pil's exactly contemporaneous, acclaimed (The Death of a Sister of Charity).

The Death of a Sister of Charity
1850; Oil on Canvas, 95 x 10' (241 x 305); Isidore Pils

Adding to the impression of artifice and distraction Courbet's work is the instant black and white of the canvas (compare the dog's coat to the drapery over the coffin), as well as the odd superimposition of figures above one another.



Reference:
-Top,M.,2013.19th Century Realism.19thcenturyrealism.com, [blog]-, available at:<http://19thcenturyrealism.com/> [Accessed 21 February 2014]

-Gunn,D.,2011.Romanticism vs. Realism. [Online] Available at:<http://www.slideshare.net/gunnd/cod-humanities-romanticism>[Accessed 21 February 2014]

-Pioch,N.,2003. Courbet Gustave.[Online] Available at:<http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/courbet/>[Accessed 21 February 2014]

-Stephen F. Einsenman, Thomas Crow, Brian Lukacher, Linda Nochlin , Frances K. Pohl,1994. Nineteenth Century Art, a critical history. USA: Thames and Hudson.