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Art & Art History vocabulary · Movements & Periods

Realism

Meaning in art & art history, with examples

/ˈriːəlɪzəm/nounCore term

In art & art history, Realism means: A mid-nineteenth-century movement, led in France by Gustave Courbet, that showed ordinary people and everyday life truthfully instead of idealised or historical scenes.

In Turkish: Realizm, Gerçekçilik

How it is used

With a capital R it names the movement; with a small r, realism means any lifelike way of showing things. Use the related words carefully: a Realist painter belongs to the movement, while a realistic detail simply looks true to life.

Example sentences

  1. Courbet's huge paintings of workers and a village funeral made Realism a subject of fierce debate.

  2. The level of realism in the fruit is amazing; you almost want to pick it up.

Common collocations

  • French Realism
  • Realist painter
  • social realism
  • photographic realism
  • ImpressionismA French art movement of the 1870s and 1880s whose painters, such as Monet, Renoir and Morisot, tried to capture light, colour and passing moments, often painting outdoors.
  • RomanticismA movement in art, music and literature from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth century that valued emotion, imagination, wild nature and the individual over reason and rules.
  • figurativeShowing people, animals or objects in a way you can recognise, even if they are simplified or distorted; the opposite of abstract.
  • art movementA group of artists who share similar ideas, aims or styles during a particular period, and the art they produce, such as Impressionism or Cubism.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Movements & Periods

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