Era: 1840 - 1875

It was in reaction to Romanticism that the artistic movement of Realism appeared mainly in France and Great Britain a little before the middle of the 19th century. Writers such as Honoré de Balzac, Émile Zola and Gustave Flaubert brought it to life in literature.

It will be the French painters Gustave Courbet with the shocking painting “The Origin of the World” and Jean-François Millet for his emblematic canvas “Des Glaneuses” who will put their brushes to use in painting. The rules and dogmas of academic painting are shaken. We attack aesthetic categories and artistic hierarchies. Scenes of daily life in their clearest banalities without idealization or embellishment become the subjects of the hour, supplanting portraiture and historical painting.

By painting ordinary scenes, painters display the social, political and economic reality of their time to reflect the world as it is and not as we would like to believe what it is or what we would like it to be. 'it be.

In short, Realism is a movement that seeks to capture the authenticity of contemporary life, moving away from romantic ideals to focus on a sincere and unadorned representation of everyday life.