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Realist Animal Prints

REALIST STYLE

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.

​​Find authentic realist paintings, sculptures, prints and more art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Realist
Color:  Green
Sacelle male, de la cote de Coromandel /// Ornithology Martinet Bird Animal Art
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: François-Nicolas Martinet (French, 1731-1800) Title: "Sacelle male, de la cote de Coromandel" (Plate 949) Portfolio: Histoire Naturelle Des Oiseaux *Signed by Martinet in the...
Category

1770s Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Intaglio, Laid Paper, Engraving, Watercolor

Related Items
Portrait de Priscilla Le Petit Chien
Located in New York, NY
Mickalene Thomas Portrait de Priscilla Le Petit Chien, 2012 Pigment print on 100% cotton rag paper Edition 148/150 Frame included with official COA affixed to the back Hand numbered from the edition of only 150 with plate signed official Certificate of Authenticity on the verso of the frame. This exquisite print, published in 2012, is based on an original collage made by the artist of her long-haired miniature dachshund (a gift from fellow artist Kehinde Wiley), Priscilla. Highly acclaimed contemporary art star Mickalene Thomas created this collage specifically for children- though adults will appreciate it as well - as will pet lovers! Portrait de Priscilla Petit Chien features Priscilla, Thomas' own dog who frequently attends the artist's photoshoots. This limited edition archival pigment print is printed on cotton rag paper and accompanied by a plate (facsimile) signed and uniquely hand numbered certificate of authenticity. It is matted and comes in a 1"-deep wooden frame with Plexiglas®. Wired for hanging. Edition of 150. This professionally framed limited edition pigment print on 100% cotton rag paper is based on an original collage made by the artist of her long-haired miniature dachshund (a gift from fellow artist Kehinde Wiley), Priscilla. The print is matted and comes in a white wooden frame (16" x 19" x 1") with Plexiglas, wired for hanging. Dimensions: 11" x 14" sheet, 9-1/4" x 12" image. Mickalene Thomas Biography: Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971, Camden, NJ; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) makes paintings, collages, photography, video, and installations that draw on art history and popular culture to create a contemporary vision of female sexuality, beauty, and power. Blurring the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary, Thomas constructs complex portraits, landscapes, and interiors in order to examine how identity, gender, and sense of self are informed by the ways women are represented in art and popular culture. Rhinestones—the artist’s signature material and a symbol of femininity—serve as an added layer of meaning and a metaphor of artifice. Thomas uses rhinestones to shade and accentuate specific elements of each painting, while subtly confronting our assumptions about what is feminine and what defines women. Thomas has drawn inspiration from multiple artistic periods and cultural influences throughout Western art history, particularly the early modernists such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Edouard Manet, and Romare Bearden. She models her figures on the classic poses and abstract settings popularized by these modern masters as a way to reclaim agency for women who have been presented as objects to be desired or subjugated. Though Thomas draws from a number of time periods and genres, her use of pattern and domestic spaces often references various periods throughout the 1960s to the 1980s. This was a time of immense social and political conflict, change, and transformation—the civil rights movement, the black is beautiful movement, and the second wave of feminism—during which many women, particularly African-Americans, rejected and redefined traditional standards of beauty. Thomas received a BFA from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, in 2000 and an MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT, in 2002. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at The Dayton Art Institute, OH (forthcoming, 2018); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (forthcoming, 2018); Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA (forthcoming, 2018); Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA (forthcoming, 2017); Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (2017); Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016); Aspen Art Museum, CO (2016); Aperture Foundation, New York (2016); George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY (2014); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2012-13); Santa Monica Museum of Art (2012); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2012); Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2011); and La Conservera Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Ceuti, Spain (2009). Select group exhibitions featuring her work include Third Space / Shifting Conversations About Contemporary Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, AL (2017); Constructing Identity: Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African-American Art, Portland Art Museum, ME (2017); The Color Line: African American Artists and the Civil Rights in the United States, Musée du quai Branly, Paris (2016); SHE: International Women Artists, Long Museum, Shanghai (2016); No Man’s Land: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC (2015); 30 Americans, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2011), which has traveled extensively around the United States (2011-2017, ongoing); and Americans Now, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC (2010). Thomas’ work is in numerous international public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; MoMA PS1, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Yale University Art Collection, New Haven, CT; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Thomas has been awarded multiple prizes and grants, including the USA Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz...
Category

2010s Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Digital Pigment, Permanent Marker, Laid Paper

Tree with moth, caterpillar..., Plate 39, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium
Located in Middletown, NY
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Plate No. 39; Unidentified tree with moth, caterpillar and pupa. The Netherlands: 1705....
Category

Early 18th Century Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Watercolor, Engraving

Hounds Gentlemen Please by Tom Carr - Engraving 26x31 cm
Located in Geneva, CH
Work on paper Ed: 63/75
Category

Mid-20th Century Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Engraving

Thistle and Moths, plate no. 6, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium
Located in Middletown, NY
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Plate No. 6; Thistle and Moths. The Netherlands: 1705. Engraving with hand coloring in w...
Category

Early 18th Century Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Watercolor, Engraving

Group of Six Insects
Located in London, GB
L’ADMIRAL, Jacob. Group of Six Insects. Johannes Sluyter [Amsterdam 1774]. Group of six insects, copper engraved plates with fine original colour, showing the metamorphosis of bu...
Category

1770s Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Watercolor, Laid Paper, Engraving

Group of Six Insects
Group of Six Insects
H 18.39 in W 12.41 in D 1.38 in
White Claw
Located in New York, NY
Walter Rogalski White Claw, 1952 Engraving on antique-white laid Homere paper Hand signed, numbered 6/25, dated and titled on lower front ; affixed to original matting Publisher The ...
Category

1950s Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Laid Paper, Engraving, Pencil

Admirable Butterflies, Magpie Moths: A Hand-colored Engraving by Moses Harris
Located in Alamo, CA
This is a hand-colored antique engraving depicting the natural history of the Admirable Butterfly and the Small Magpie Moth, which is plate 6 from Moses Harris' publication "The Aure...
Category

Mid-19th Century Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Engraving

Tigre couché à l'entrée de son antre (Tiger Lying at the Entrance to its Lair)
Located in Middletown, NY
Etching, drypoint, and roulette on watermarked Hallines cream laid paper, 3 3/4 x 5 7/8 inches (95 x 148 mm), full margins. A very good impression of this charming image, with all of...
Category

Early 19th Century Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Laid Paper, Drypoint, Etching

Tortoise-shell Butterfly, Hawk Moth: Antique Hand-colored Engraving by M. Harris
Located in Alamo, CA
This is a hand-colored antique engraving depicting the natural history of the Privet Hawk Moth, Tortoise-shell Butterfly, which is plate 2 from Moses Harris' publication "The Aurelia...
Category

Mid-19th Century Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Engraving

The Natural History of Moths: An Antique Hand-colored Engraving by Moses Harris
Located in Alamo, CA
This is a hand-colored engraving depicting the natural history of Pinkunderwing Moths, Cream Spotted Tyger Moths, which is plate 4 from Moses Harris' publication "The Aurelian: or Na...
Category

Mid-19th Century Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Engraving

Bird and Beetle - Etching and watercolor (Natural History of Birds, 1741)
Located in Paris, FR
George EDWARDS Bird and beetle ('The Gowry Bird') Original engraving, enhanced with watercolor Printed signature in the plate Dated, 1741 28.8 x 23.3 cm Created for Volume I of the...
Category

1740s Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Engraving, Watercolor

Cocoa plant, caterpillar, ..., Plate 26, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium
Located in Middletown, NY
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Plate No. 26; Cocoa plant, caterpillar, pupa, and butterflies. The Netherlands: 1705. En...
Category

Early 18th Century Realist Animal Prints

Materials

Watercolor, Engraving

Realist animal prints for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Realist animal prints available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add animal prints created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of green and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Carl Arlen, Peter Sculthorpe, Francois Nicolas Martinet, and Mari Kloppel. Frequently made by artists working with Lithograph, and Paper and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Realist animal prints, so small editions measuring 0.5 inches across are also available. Prices for animal prints made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $50 and tops out at $10,150, while the average work sells for $410.

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