Cane Corso
Late 20th Century Realist Still-life Sculptures
Bronze
1860s Realist Animal Paintings
Oil, Wood Panel
People Also Browsed
1860s Other Art Style Animal Paintings
Canvas, Oil
19th Century Old Masters Animal Paintings
Oil
Mid-20th Century Victorian Animal Paintings
Canvas, Oil
19th Century Animal Paintings
Canvas, Oil
1860s Victorian Animal Paintings
Canvas, Oil
1860s Victorian Animal Paintings
Oil, Board
20th Century French Classical Roman Statues
Cast Stone
Early 19th Century Old Masters Animal Paintings
Oil
1870s Realist Animal Paintings
Oil, Wood Panel
19th Century Victorian Animal Paintings
Oil
19th Century Realist Portrait Paintings
Oil
Early 1900s Realist Animal Paintings
Canvas, Oil
Mid-19th Century Victorian Animal Paintings
Oil, Canvas
Martin Theodore WardFine Victorian Oil Painting Portrait of Scruffy Terrier Dog Staring in Gilt Frme
1850s Victorian Animal Paintings
Canvas, Oil
Mid-20th Century American Impressionist Figurative Sculptures
Wood, Paint
Early 20th Century Austrian Belle Époque Animal Sculptures
Bronze
A Close Look at realist Art
Realist art attempts to portray its subject matter without artifice. Similar to naturalism, authentic realist paintings and prints see an integration of true-to-life colors, meticulous detail and linear perspectives for accurate portrayals of the world.
Work that involves illusionistic techniques of realism dates back to the classical world, such as the deceptive trompe l’oeil used since ancient Greece. Art like this became especially popular in the 17th century when Dutch artists like Evert Collier painted objects that appeared real enough to touch. Realism as an artistic movement, however, usually refers to 19th-century French realist artists such as Honoré Daumier exploring social and political issues in biting lithographic prints, while the likes of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet painting people — particularly the working class — with all their imperfections, navigating everyday urban life. This was a response to the dominant academic art tradition that favored grand paintings of myth and history.
By the turn of the 20th century, European artists, such as the Pre-Raphaelites, were experimenting with nearly photographic realism in their work, as seen in the attention to every botanical attribute of the flowers surrounding the drowned Ophelia painted by English artist John Everett Millais.
Although abstraction was the guiding style of 20th-century art, the realism trend in American modern art endured in Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth and other artists’ depictions of the complexities of the human experience. In the late 1960s, Photorealism emerged with artists like Chuck Close and Richard Estes giving their paintings the precision of a frame of film.
Contemporary artists such as Jordan Casteel, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Aliza Nisenbaum are now using the unvarnished realist approach for honest representations of people and their worlds. Alongside traditional mediums, technology such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and immersive installations are helping artists create new sensations of realism in art.
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