Avant-Garde Realism in England: Coping with Contemporary Life The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848-1853) Debuting in the revolutionary year of 1848 under the mysterious acronym “PRB,” the paintings showed a virtuoso demonstration of technical prowess in painting and...
REALISM IN EUROPE Part Two Because art history tends to focus towards all things French, French “Realism” is often considered the exemplar of European Realism. Given that the British did not experience a violent Revolution in 1848, it is certainly correct...
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS (1723-1792) Royal Academy in England: Classicism and Conservatism Although the Royal Academy in England was established one hundred years later than the Royal Academy in France, England’s academic system was part on an ongoing rivalry for dominance...
THE AVANT-GARDE IN FRANCE The Generation of Realism 1850s In 1845, The art critic, Théophile Thoré (who “discovered” Vermeer) complained that French art was “..without system, without direction, and abandoned to individual fantasy.” According...
EUROPEAN REALISM Part One In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Revolution of 1848 broke out like a series of brushfires across the continent of Europe. Although the uprising of the lower classes and the peasants was the last significant attempt to achieve...
REALISM IN THE SALONS IN THE 1850s Realism had many faces. As an international impulse seen in European and American art, Realism was not so much a style or a look as a new approach to art, overtaking the old ideas of exhausted Romanticism. By the 1840s, due to the...
