Realism & Academic

Around 1850, Realism turned away from history, myth and idealised beauty to show ordinary people and everyday work as they were. Gustave Courbet painted peasants and labourers on the scale of history paintings, Jean-François Millet gave dignity to rural life, and Édouard Manet’s modern subjects and flat, bold brushwork shocked the Paris Salon; in Russia, Ilya Repin, and in Hungary, Mihály Munkácsy painted their societies with the same frankness.

At the same time, academic painting, taught in the official art schools and rewarded at the Salons, prized flawless finish, careful drawing and noble subjects, as in the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. In America, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins developed a vigorous realism of their own, from the sea to the rowing course.