Realism in France: Millet, Breton, Corot, and Bonheur and Everyday Life

Despite Courbet's insistence that socialism informed his realist painting, not all realist artists pursued their political objectives.

However, they shared an interest in the lives of the lower class and a desire to represent them in erudite art.

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) completed a trio of works, Les Respingadoras, The Sower, and Angelus, which represented the hard work of the rural peasant class with dignity, but with a less confrontational tone than Courbet's works.

However, even Millet's seemingly innocuous celebration of rural France's backbone was received as potentially socialist and perilous content by conservative critics following the 1848 Revolution, which granted greater rights to provincial men.

Jean-François Millet. Self-portrait 1881

Jules Breton's paintings were considered a safer alternative and were called 'popular realism'.

In his important work Les Respingadores, he portrays the same practice as Millet's painting, where poor rural women can pick up the leftover grains after the harvest.

However, Breton imagined the scene happening within a strict order where a man with a dog dominates the scene, supervising the field work.

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875), was perhaps best known for establishing the genre of landscape as independently valuable and being a precursor to impressionism, and although occasionally including small figures to appease certain academic tastes for historical or allegorical themes, he preferred a genre he invented.

Autor of beautiful landscapes, his paintings are masterful in their subtle use of tonality and melancholic, even nostalgic atmosphere; this can be largely inspired by the Industrial Revolution, whose effects cannot be seen in any of his work.

The portrait of a young woman in a pose reminiscent of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, is one of his most famous works, titled The Woman with a Pearl.

The painter Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), whose progressive parents allowed her to study animal anatomy in barns and slaughterhouses from a young age, achieved fame for the first time with a commissioned painting that depicts four peasants leading a bull to plow a field.

As if thought to be a reference to a scene, this first example of realism was spared from criticism of Courbet's major works.

In her main work, The Horse Fair, the artist demonstrated her focus on work and her ability to create dynamic compositions through attentive observation.