Final answer:
The Realist art movement focuses on portraying everyday life with truth and accuracy, featuring artists like Gustave Courbet who depicted unromanticized scenes of the working class. Courbet's paintings were controversial because they presented the lower-class subject matter in a manner traditionally reserved for higher subjects. Realism was the antecedent to Impressionism and reflected the social and industrial changes of the time.
Step-by-step explanation:
Understanding the Realist Art Movement
The Realist art movement revolved around portraying ordinary and contemporary life with a sense of truth and accuracy. It began in France in the 1850s, as a reaction against the emotionalism and exaggerated drama of the Romantic movement. Realists aimed to depict the daily lives of people, from the peasant class to the bourgeoisie, without idealization or romanticization. This art movement encapsulated a variety of life scenes, including the labor of working people, as shown by the painters like Gustave Courbet, Honore Daumier, and Jean-Francois Millet. The subjects were not beautified, instead their true, often harsh, realities were highlighted.
Gustave Courbet, in particular, was well known for his Realist paintings like The Stonebreakers, which portrayed unidealized peasants in the act of manual labor. This was considered controversial and avant-garde because it presented what was generally considered a lowly subject on a grand scale that was typically reserved for nobler historical or religious themes. Furthermore, Courbet's socialist beliefs were evident in his works, reflecting the concerns for the struggles of the poor and aligning with the surging socialist ideas of Karl Marx.
Realism was not just about photographic accuracy; it represented social realities and human conditions unflinchingly. Realist paintings featured dynamic brushstrokes and visible textures, anticipating the techniques used by the Impressionist movement that succeeded it. The Realist movement was an artistic acknowledgment of the rapidly changing social and industrial landscape of the time.