European Realism in 10 Paintings

1. Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers

If there is one artist and one painting that sums up Realism, this is it. Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) was politically radical and attention-seeking. He had been painting fairly traditional genre subjects, based on his own experience growing up in rural France. However, partly inspired by the Revolution of 1848, which overthrew the monarchy and briefly created the Second French Republic, he changed his style. The Stone Breakers was huge—over 2.5 meters across (8.5 ft). The poverty of the two figures with their torn, dirty clothing is unavoidably spotlit by bright sunshine. They are positioned right in the foreground, with little sense of depth and no distractions—almost falling out of the canvas towards us.

For the 1850 Salon goers, The Stone Breakers and Burial at Ornans, which Courbet also exhibited, broke all artistic conventions. Poverty was usually distant, picturesque, or humorous. This man and boy were clearly dressed in contemporary clothes, they were posed awkwardly, with a brutality which must have struck home so soon after the revolution. Stone breaking was thankless task, often given to convicts, and here the difference in age suggests that the boy has nothing more to look forward to.

2. Jean-François Millet, The Sower

Also exhibited at the 1850 Salon, The Sower by Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) had much of the same shock value as Courbet’s paintings. Millet has a superficially more conventional style—his loose, richly colored brushwork has an almost Romantic quality reminiscent of Eugene Delacroix. Equally, the Sower had been a feature of art since the Middle Ages. However, there is something deeply threatening about the anonymous figure striding so confidently downhill, all the more so in the context of the recent political unrest. Looming above us, he almost seems to be sowing the seeds of revolution.

Millet came from a peasant background and spent his entire life painting the rural population around Barbizon, where he lived. Whereas Courbet continued to court controversy, for instance with a painting of sex workers sunning themselves on the banks of the Seine, Millet was content just to let the barren landscapes and hard labor speak for itself. His images of women, especially, most famously The Gleaners, remained defiantly un-idealized.

3. Ford Madox Brown, Work

Art was very different in Britain during the 1850s and at first glance, there seems little similarity between French Realism and the work of Pre-Raphaelite artists like Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893). Yet one of their fundamental ideas was that everything should be painted from life “rejected nothing, selecting nothing”, as John Ruskin put it. Many of their works tackled controversial social issues, like emigration and prostitution. Equally, although we see bright colors and prettiness, contemporaries, like Charles Dickens, saw them as “mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting”.

Here, Brown shows us urban poverty and labor in a recognizable London suburb. The well-to-do are relegated to the background and the periphery. There are thieves and beggars, do-gooders, immigrants. Like Courbet, Brown shows us young and old, vivid sun-drenched detail, and ultra-contemporary relevance. Like Millet, there is a sense of threat: the riders literally have their way blocked by the muscled workers who are ripping up the road.

4. George Frederick Watts, Found Drowned

There was no revolution in Britain in 1848, but plenty of people were concerned about social and political problems. Industrialization and rapid urbanization were causing overcrowding, poor working conditions, and pollution. Groups like the Chartists had been campaigning for electoral reform, and many artists and writers, including Dickens, were concerned about the so-called “Condition of England”. George Frederick Watts (1817–1904), better known as a portraitist and history painter, produced a group of Realist works, including The Irish Famine and Found Drowned.

A stripped-back townscape, recognizably of Waterloo Bridge in London, forms the backdrop for a starkly lit corpse. A woman, likely pregnant and abandoned, has taken her own life, her body now washed up on the river bank like a piece of rubbish. In her hand, she still clasps her lover’s locket. Her plain dress suggests her social status—poor but respectable. A single star suggests that God has not abandoned her, even if society has. The issue of female suicide and of so-called “fallen women” was a very current one—Thomas Hood’s poem Bridge of Sighs was an inspiration. Watts, however, presents it using the Realist language of strong lighting, lack of detail, and dull colors.

5. Hubert von Herkomer, On Strike

Like Watts, Hubert von Herkomer (1849–1914) was a portraitist and academician, not a natural rebel, but throughout his career, he painted social subjects, from Hard Times to On Strike. This image of a working-class family is ambiguous, especially without the title, but simply to show the urban poor in such an unvarnished way was unusual. On Strike was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891, after a particularly harsh winter, a spate of strikes, and a very recent demonstration of over 300,000 people against poor working conditions.

Contemporary critics were divided amongst those who saw the man as threatening, those who thought he had been heroicized, and those who empathized with the family’s plight. Herkomer had started his career as a graphic artist working in the London press and he takes a deliberately objective stance. He asks the viewer to make up their own mind. However, by showing a working-class man, lifesize, at the Academy, he makes a powerful Realist statement.

6. Ilya Repin, Barge Haulers on the Volga

Ilya Repin (1844–1930) was part of a group of artists known as the Wanderers (Peredvizhniki) who wanted to bring art to the people and represent the people—honestly—in their art. Barge haulers were a common sight in Russia, where social inequality was vast and labor was cheap. Enslavement had only recently become illegal with the abolition of serfdom in 1861. The 11 figures in the painting represent different ages and classes, including a defrocked priest. Although Repin does not show any women, they were also employed to haul barges.

The effort and the exhaustion are palpable, especially in the rear figure who is on the point of collapse. The fourth man stares directly, threateningly, at us as if to ask how we can let this happen. The ship they tow flies the Russian flag, upside down, to emphasize that this is not how things should be. Far in the distance, a steamboat represents the future. Repin seems to be saying it is not coming quickly enough. Much later in his career, he would celebrate the 1905 Revolution, but the Barge Haulers is a painting of misery and despair.

7. Adolph Menzel, The Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclopes)

Factory subjects were not common in 19th-century art, despite the obvious impact of the Industrial Revolution throughout Europe. Even most Realist artists focused on rural subjects. Adolph Menzel (1815–1905), who was equally happy painting high society and historical subjects, here tries to represent the reality of modern industry. He based his final painting on hours of meticulous study and sketches in a real rolling mill. On a huge canvas, 2.5 meters (100 in.) across, he portrays over 40 figures tangled in a mesh of girders, ropes, and chains which create a frenetic atmosphere.

By subtitling the painting Modern Cyclopes, Menzel deliberately compares these modern workers to figures from Greek mythology. The scene also has a hellish quality as the light spreads out from the furnace with a red glow. Arguably too, he idealizes the muscular workers, whilst probably underplaying the severity of the conditions which they were working in. Rather like Repin, however, he allows one of his figures, the only woman, on the extreme right, to look directly out at us, accusingly. She seems to be asking: “Is this how people should have to work?”

8. Jules Bastien-Lepage, Haymaking

You can draw a line from Realism to Impressionism through works like Edouard Manet‘s Olympia, but the true torch-bearer for the movement was Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884). He inspired a whole new generation of Realists during the 1880s with his clear, cool, and apparently objective representations of rural life. Whereas Courbet and Millet had worked in the studio, Lepage painted outside, giving an added sense of authenticity. Unlike the Impressionists, he was less interested in capturing movement and light and more interested in showing people.

Haymaking has the same focus on the foreground figure and featureless landscape as we see in mid-century Realism. The woman has the inelegant slump of someone who is utterly exhausted, whilst the man behind has literally fallen asleep. Like Courbet’s Stone Breakers, they have their food with them because they are forced to work the whole day in the fields. The high horizon hems the figures in, emphasizing the enormity of the task they are undertaking. Even the color seems weary and bleached out.

9. Peder Krøyer, Fishermen Hauling a Net at the North Beach

Bastien-Lepage was a hugely influential artist during the late 19th century. All over Europe, artists, who had often trained in France, sought out rural communities where the light was clear and they could paint working people outside. There were “colonies”, as they became known on the English coast in places like Newlyn, and in Scandinavia. At Skagen in Denmark, artists, like Peder Krøyer (1851–1909), gathered to paint the fishing community.

As Krøyer’s very specific title suggests, he wants his painting to be a believable record of fishermen hauling in nets. Lepage’s cool palette has been enriched and darkened to suggest the dying light of late afternoon, but it also brings a softness. The figures are straining against the weight of the nets, but the repetition of their poses suggests that they are working together. It gives a sense of community, which is lacking in Repin’s Barge Haulers.

10. James Guthrie, A Hind’s Daughter

A group of artists known as the Glasgow Boys brought Bastien-Lepage’s style to Scotland. Many of them trained in France, and when they returned home, they too settled in rural “colonies”, like Cockburnspath, where James Guthrie (1859–1930) painted the Hind’s Daughter (hind is a Scottish term for an agricultural laborer). The washed-out color is very obviously influenced by Bastien-Lepage, but Guthrie goes much further in terms of his technique. Breaking up the picture surface with big square brushstrokes, he suggests the harshness of the landscape, and of this child’s life, in his actual application of the paint.

The girl is cutting a cabbage, a staple food of the poor, from a meagre field that will have to see the family through the winter. Like Millet’s figures she is defeminized by her thick, sacking apron, heavy boots, and boyish hairstyle. The girl seems old beyond her years, wielding the knife in an almost threatening way as she stares us out. However, there is some of Herkomer’s ambiguity. She is not so much calling for change, as Repin’s barge hauler does, as stand in defence of her way of life. By the late 19th century, Realism could not avoid an element of nostalgia. Both the real world, and the art world, had moved on.