Art Analysis-Realism-ART 101

Comparative Analysis of Realism

Comparative Analysis of Realism

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1850, Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France

Gustave Courbet’s monumental canvas, A Burial at Ornans, presents entrenched hierarchy of suitable acceptable art subjects. Rather than a historical event or biblical tableau, Courbet depicted a humble peasant funeral as grandly as any state occasion. His unflinching focus on ordinary working people and gritty realism, with surface textures exposed through choppy, unblended brushwork, directly challenges French Academy conventions of idealized history painting (Michalska, 2023). The traditional romantic painting portrays ordinary citizens unlike what was common in other paintings from long-established artists who concentrated on theimages from royal family members or mythological figures. The images tells a lot about leveling of social class in the Ornan’s community.  

In the Loge Painting by Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt’s Impressionist-influenced canvas In the Loge also represents modern subjects drawn from contemporary bourgeois life. It captures an anonymous yet fashionable young woman peering intently through opera glasses at the urban entertainment before her (Gurney, 2020). Cassatt’s bold, loose brushwork and closely cropped composition deviate sharply from the reserved polish and distant narrative, removing expectations of Salon painting. The soft pastel colors and intimate inclusion of luxury details like ermine fur and gilded opera boxes contrast Courbet’s stark, almost mournful view of lower-class rural lives. The painting also presents themes of gender and class privileged and I think this challenges long-established artists who ignored such kind of themes in their artwork. I makes us believe how impressionism and realism were connected with contemporary subjects that emphasized on everyday life. 

Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic, 1875,

Thomas Eakins’ realist painting The Gross Clinic presents an unflinching, vividly lit surgical theater scene, with keen scientific observation of light striking flesh and viscera. Its uncompromising, blood-spattered accuracy and anti-theatrical viewpoint challenged accepted notions of high art by exposing typically hidden worlds. Eakins’ painting provoked outrage when first displayed, given the grim ambiance of a medical lecture hall more fitting than an illustrious gallery (Floryan, 2015).

So, while Courbet, Cassatt, and Eakins all passed over elevated historical, mythical, or even wholesome tableaus in favor of bracingly modern imagery, their specific aims and techniques vary. Courbet soberly conveyed impoverished rural denizens’ innate dignity and hardship through a deliberately anti-idealized, almost funerary realist style that acknowledges the canvas surface itself. Cassatt adopted essential Impressionist methods of vigorous, loose brushwork and asymmetrical cropping to capture the ephemeral moods and glimpses of a privileged woman navigating Paris’ bustling urban leisure. The spontaneity of her brisk strokes also grants refreshing autonomy to the mundane female experience typically neglected in painting. Eakins’ stark, detached dissection of usually veiled scenes relentlessly exposes the chaotic realities sublimated beneath civilized veneers.

Together, their unvarnished realism expanded both permissible pictorial subjects and types of everyday truth deemed suitable for fine art’s analytical contemplation. Despite widely diverging tones, intimacy, and class perspectives, each artist challenged ingrained hierarchies embedded in the French Academy’s strictures by forging their candid visual languages to observe modern life’s overlooked corners.

References

Floryan, M. (2015). Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic. Smarthistory. https://smarthistory.org/eakins-the-gross-clinic/

Gurney, T. (2020). In the Loge by Mary Cassatt. TheHistoryOfArt.org. https://www.thehistoryofart.org/mary-cassatt/in-the-loge/

Michalska, M. (2023). Masterpiece Story: A Burial at Ornans by Gustave Courbet. DailyArt Magazine. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/burial-at-ornans-gustave-courbet/