Vladimir Orlovsky (Владимир Донатович Орловский) (1842-1914, Russia/Ukraine)
Vladimir Orlovsky was a Russian/Ukrainian realist landscape painter.
Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910, Germany)
Achenbach was a German landscape painter, associated with the Düsseldorf school. His style is central to 19th century German landscape painting, and defined the post-Friedrich period moving from Romanticism to Realism.
William Merritt Chase (1849–1916, United States)
Figure paintings
William Merritt Chase was an American painter and exponent of Impressionism.
Konstantin Makovsky (1839—1915, Russia)
Landscapes
Makovsky was an influential Russian painter, affiliated with the Peredvizhniki school of Realism. While some of his work reacts against the Academy, he found success in the Salon alongside other Academic painters, and his work can be seen as perhaps related to the French movement of Academic Naturalism. Many of his historical paintings showed an idealised, Romantic view of Russian life of prior centuries, with a particular focus on Boyar people and culture. He was also a popular and prolific portrait painter.
Anders Zorn (1860–1920, Sweden)
Society Portraits
Anders Zorn is a Swedish painter, perhaps the internationally best-known artist from his country. While known primarily as an oil painter, he was also a gifted watercolourist and along with Joaquín Sorolla and John Singer Sargent represented a highly virtuoso style of painting between the styles of 19th century Academic art, realism and impressionism.
He attained a great deal of fame during his lifetime as a painter of the famous (including royalty and three American presidents), and this allowed him a great accumulation of wealth during his lifetime. He used this money primarily to build a substantial art collection, which he donated to the Swedish state upon his death, and also to purchase 40 timber houses which Zorn wished to preserve to ensure that the art of traditional timber building was not forgotten. This reflects the respect of Zorn for his other great subject of painting, which was poor and working people, and rural environments.
Anton Mauve (1838–88, The Netherlands)
Watercolours
Mauve was a Dutch realist painter who was a leading member of the Hague School. A master colourist, he was a significant early influence on his cousin-in-law Vincent van Gogh. His best known paintings depict peasants working in the fields. His paintings of flocks of sheep were especially popular with American patrons.
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877, France)
Gustave Courbet was a French painter of the 19th century, and a pivotal figure in the movement towards realism in western art. Realism can be defined by the depiction of scenes as they actually appear rather than in idealised poses, and often involves a focus on ‘low’ subject matters such as working people, cluttered rooms, and landscapes depicted in naturalistic fashion rather than classically structured.
Courbet was accomplished in most painted genres of the time, though had an aversion to traditional subjects such as religious and the ancient world. His countless landscapes influenced many painters of the time, and his L'Origine du monde earned him one of many notorieties, some of which nowadays may seem hard to understand.
Konstantin Makovsky (1839—1915, Russia)
Boyar paintings
Makovsky was an influential Russian painter, affiliated with the Peredvizhniki school of Realism. While some of his work reacts against the Academy, he found success in the Salon alongside other Academic painters, and his work can be seen as perhaps related to the French movement of Academic Naturalism. Many of his historical paintings showed an idealised, Romantic view of Russian life of prior centuries, with a particular focus on Boyar people and culture. He was also a popular and prolific portrait painter.
Charles Sprague Pearce (1851–1914, United States/France)
Rural paintings
Pearce was an American artist, working in the Naturalist style of Academic realism. He is best-known for his depictions of French peasants at work and rest.
Anders Zorn (1860–1920, Sweden)
Nudes
Anders Zorn is a Swedish painter, perhaps the internationally best-known artist from his country. While known primarily as an oil painter, he was also a gifted watercolourist and along with Joaquín Sorolla and John Singer Sargent represented a highly virtuoso style of painting between the styles of 19th century Academic art, realism and impressionism.
He attained a great deal of fame during his lifetime as a painter of the famous (including royalty and three American presidents), and this allowed him a great accumulation of wealth during his lifetime. He used this money primarily to build a substantial art collection, which he donated to the Swedish state upon his death, and also to purchase 40 timber houses which Zorn wished to preserve to ensure that the art of traditional timber building was not forgotten. This reflects the respect of Zorn for his other great subject of painting, which was poor and working people, and rural environments.
James Guthrie (1859–1930, Scotland)
Guthrie was a Scottish painter, best known in his own lifetime for his portraiture, although today more generally regarded for his Realist genre painting.
Nicolaas van der Waay (1855-1936, The Netherlands)
Van der Waay was a Dutch decorative artist, watercolorist and lithographer. He worked in many genres, including stamp, coin and banknote designs. He is perhaps best known for the allegorical illustrations he created for the Golden Coach and a series of paintings depicting the lives of girls from the Amsterdam Orphanage.
Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–84, France)
Bastien-Lepage is a French painter of the 19th century closely associated with the beginning of Naturalism, an artistic style that emerged from the later phase of the Realist movement. His output is best-known for its depictions of poor and working people, often in the countryside, but he also painted portraits and landscapes.
The English critic Roger Fry, writing in 1920 of Bastien-Lepage’s legacy:
Monet is an artist whose chief claim to recognition lies in the fact of his astonishing power of faithfully reproducing certain aspects of nature, but his really naive innocence and sincerity was taken by the public to be the most audacious humbug, and it required the teaching of men like Bastien-Lepage, who cleverly compromised between the truth and an accepted convention of what things looked like, to bring the world gradually around to admitting truths which a single walk in the country with purely unbiased vision would have established beyond doubt.
Anton Mauve (1838–88, The Netherlands)
Oil paintings
Mauve was a Dutch realist painter who was a leading member of the Hague School. A master colourist, he was a significant early influence on his cousin-in-law Vincent van Gogh. His best known paintings depict peasants working in the fields. His paintings of flocks of sheep were especially popular with American patrons.