For This Week's Discussion, Choose Realism Or Impressionism ✓ Solved

For this week's discussion, choose realism or impre

For this week's discussion, choose realism or impressionism and discuss how your choice is manifested in any area of the humanities (painting, sculpture, literature, music, etc.), and give an example from any discipline in the humanities to illustrate how realism or impressionism influenced the work of art. Provide an analysis of how the work of art was influenced by the movement.

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Choosing Realism: Scope and Rationale

I choose Realism as the focus for this discussion. Emerging in mid-19th-century Europe, Realism sought to represent everyday life, social conditions, and ordinary people with unembellished fidelity, rejecting the idealized subjects and romanticized forms of earlier academic and Romantic traditions (Sayre, 2013). The movement manifested strongly in multiple humanities disciplines—most notably painting and literature—where artists and writers aimed to expose social realities and political tensions using direct, often unsentimental portrayals (Britannica, n.d.).

Manifestation of Realism in Painting

In painting, Realism is characterized by subject matter drawn from contemporary life: laborers, urban scenes, domestic interiors, and political events. Realist painters adopted a palette and brushwork that emphasized tactile truth over idealized finish, and they sometimes applied scale and compositional strategies previously reserved for history painting to ordinary subjects, thereby elevating contemporary life to the level of public importance (Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.; Khan Academy, n.d.). Realist painters also used art as social commentary, making visible the conditions of the working class that industrialization had produced (Sayre, 2013).

Manifestation of Realism in Literature

Literary Realism developed in parallel, with novelists such as Honoré de Balzac and Charles Dickens depicting social structures, economic hardship, and character psychology with detailed observation. Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine presented recurring characters across novels to build a comprehensive social panorama, while Dickens exposed industrial-era inequities through serialized fiction that combined narrative realism with social critique (Britannica: Balzac; Britannica: Dickens). Both literary and visual Realists shared a commitment to represent the lived experience of ordinary people rather than mythic or aristocratic heroes.

Example from Painting: Gustav(e) Courbet’s The Stone Breakers

A canonical example of Realism in painting is Gustave Courbet’s The Stone Breakers (1849; destroyed 1945). Courbet depicted two laborers—one young, one old—engaged in backbreaking manual work on a rural roadside. Rather than idealize or sentimentalize the figures, Courbet rendered them with physical specificity: tattered clothes, strained postures, and earth-toned coloration that emphasizes the materiality of their labor (Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.; Britannica: Courbet). The painting’s monumental scale and directness placed a humble subject within the pictorial space normally reserved for grand historical narratives, thereby making a political and aesthetic statement about whose lives were worthy of serious artistic depiction (Khan Academy, n.d.).

Courbet’s compositional choices—frontal viewing, lack of narrative dramatization, and refusal to provide moralizing gestures—reflect Realism’s philosophical commitments. The painting does not prescribe sympathy through overt sentiment; instead, it insists viewers confront the factual conditions of labor. Scholars argue that Courbet’s technique and subject matter advanced an art practice tied to social observation and to a nascent modern politics of class (Gombrich, 1995; Clark, 1999).

Example from Printmaking: Honoré Daumier’s Rue Transnonain

Another potent manifestation is Honoré Daumier’s lithograph Rue Transnonain (1834), which documented state violence during a Parisian worker unrest. Daumier compressed evidence and emotional effect into a stark black-and-white image that functioned as both documentary record and political indictment (Musée d'Orsay, n.d.; Britannica: Daumier). The lithograph’s unvarnished depiction of dead bodies in a private home brought public attention to governmental repression—an effect achievable because Realism foregrounded truth-telling over decorative prettiness (Sayre, 2013).

Daumier’s use of mass-media printmaking also demonstrates Realism’s social reach: the lithograph circulated widely and influenced public opinion in ways that canvas painting alone could not, connecting artistic representation to immediate civic discourse (Musée d'Orsay, n.d.).

How Realism Influenced Form and Content

Realism influenced both what artists depicted (content) and how they depicted it (form). Content shifted toward the quotidian, the socioeconomically marginal, and the politically charged. Form changed through tighter observational detail, flattened heroics, and a palette or printing approach that favored verisimilitude over idealization. In literature, this meant complex social environments and psychological realism; in visual arts, it meant composition and scale choices that assert the dignity or urgency of ordinary lives (Sayre, 2013; Britannica, n.d.).

At a broader cultural level, Realism foregrounded the idea that art could be an instrument of social inquiry. By documenting poverty, labor, and institutional power, Realist works invited audiences to consider systemic causes of inequality rather than attributing suffering to fate or individual moral failings (Balzac; Dickens; Clark, 1999).

Contemporary Relevance

Realism’s legacy persists in documentary photography, social realist cinema, and contemporary literature that examines structural inequality. The movement established a language for representing reality in ways that demand ethical and political response, and its methods continue to inform artists and scholars who treat representation as civic engagement (Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.; Khan Academy, n.d.).

Conclusion

Realism as a humanities movement reshaped subject matter and aesthetic strategies across disciplines. Through works like Courbet’s The Stone Breakers and Daumier’s Rue Transnonain, Realism made visible the conditions of ordinary people and used artistic form to press social critique. Its commitment to factual representation and social inquiry continues to influence how artists and writers connect representation to reform.

References

  • Sayre, H. M. (2013). Discovering the Humanities (2nd ed.). Pearson Education. (Discusses Realism across arts disciplines.)
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art. (n.d.). Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) and The Stone Breakers. The Met Collection. https://www.metmuseum.org/
  • Musée d'Orsay. (n.d.). Honoré Daumier, Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834. Musée d'Orsay Collections. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/
  • Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (n.d.). Realism. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Realism-art
  • Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (n.d.). Gustave Courbet. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gustave-Courbet
  • Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (n.d.). Honoré de Balzac. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Honore-de-Balzac
  • Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (n.d.). Charles Dickens. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Dickens
  • Khan Academy. (n.d.). Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers (analysis). Khan Academy Art History. https://www.khanacademy.org/
  • Gombrich, E. H. (1995). The Story of Art (16th ed.). Phaidon Press. (Survey of major movements including Realism.)
  • Clark, T. J. (1999). Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. In The Painting of Modern Life. Princeton University Press. (Examines Courbet’s social and political context.)

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