Arthur Wardle On Sale

Arthur Wardle was a British artist and animalier painter. His prolific oeuvre focused on his fascination with dogs of various breeds, creating rich, naturalistic paintings of domestic pets and hunting animals captured in moments of lifelike movement. His work is characterized by its high degree of realism and is representative of the 19th-century interest in detailed artistic representations of animals. Born in 1860 in London, England, Wardle notably began exhibiting his work at age 16 at the Royal Academy. He began his career by sketching cattle near the Thames river, and would frequently depict exotic wildlife by studying them at the London Zoo and then transposing them onto local landscapes. Wardle was widely appreciated and acclaimed for his paintings, garnering inclusion among the Pastel Society in 1911 and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1922. Wardle died on July 16, 1949, in London, England, and his legacy lives on through his images' reproduction on commercial products like chocolate boxes, posters, calendars, and postcards. Today, the artist’s work can be found amongst the collections of the London-based Tate Modern, Leeds City Museum and The Kennel Club.

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.