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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE AGE OF POSITIVISM: REALISM,
IMPRESSIONISM, AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITES,
1848 1885
Courbet’s A Burial at Ornans
Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l‘Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)
Claude Monet, Water Lilies
Eakins’s The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic
Edgar Degas The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage
Edouard Manet’s Olympia
Mary Cassatt, In the Loge (At the Francais, a Sketch)
Google Earth Coordinates:
Eiffel Tower, Paris
Realism in France
Key Images
Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, p. 862, 25.1
Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, p. 862, 25.2
Jean-François Millet, The Sower, p. 863, 25.3
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Plum Estate, Kameido, from the series One Hundred Famous Views of
Edo,
p. 871, 25.13
Claude Monet, On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, p. 872, 25.14
Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, p. 873, 25.15
Primary Source: Lila Cabot Perry (1848?-
Materials and Techniques: Impressionist Color Theory, p. 874
The French Realist movement was a political style linked to the Revolution of 1848,
in which the supremacy of the aristocracy was challenged and the French peasantry
was championed.
Édouard Manet s The Luncheon on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l Herbe) (25.10) was
intended as a critique of bourgeois values.
Edgar Degas was very influenced by the flat outlines used in Japanese prints
(Japonisme).
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British Realism
Key Images
William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, p. 882, 25.23
John Everett Millais, ,
Primary Source: James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), from The Gentle Art of
Making Enemies, p. 885
In England, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, started by William Holman Hunt, John
Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, condemned the art of the Royal Academy
and most of the paintings dating to after the early career of Raphael, calling the works
decadent. William Morris later joined this group.
Realism in America
Key Images
Thomas Eakins, Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (The Champion Single Sculls), p. 888,
25.29
Winslow Homer, Snap the Whip, p. 890, 25.30
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Winslow Homer produced naturalistic genre scenes incorporating symbolic imagery
into his works, evoking a nostalgia for Antebellum America.
Photography: A Mechanical Medium for Mass-Produced Art
Key Images
Augustus Washington, John Brown, p. 891, 25.31
Primary Source: Charles Baudelaire (1821-
The Salon of 1859, p. 896
Photography was initially used as a means to record and document daily life.
Key Images
St. Pancras Station, London, p. 898, 25.38
The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, showing the main dome and entrance from the
Key Terms/Places/Names
the Haussmann plan
Positivism
flâneur
Japonisme
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Discussion Questions
1. In what ways do Courbet s Burial at Ornans (25.2) and Daumier s The Third Class
Carriage (25.5) make social statements?
2. How does the style of Rosa Bonheur contrast to Gustave Courbet?
6. How does the subjec
Monet?
7. Max Schmitt in a Single Skull (25.29) reflect a scientific inquiry?
Resources
Books
Adams, Steven. The Barbizon School and the Origin of Impressionism. London: Phaidon,
1994.
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Hale, Nancy. Mary Cassatt. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1987.
Needham, Gerald. 19th Century Realist Art. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.
Patin, Sylvie. Monet, The Ultimate Impressionist, tr. Anthony Roberts. New York:
Harry Abrams, 1993.
DVDs
Great Women Artists: Mary Cassatt. (2006). Kultur Video. 45 min.
Mary Cassatt: A Brush with Independence. (2001). Homevision. 57 min.