Use this tic-tac-toe game to explore the motivations and inspirations of American Realist painters.

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While strains of Realism have long existed, it crystalized as an art movement in the shadow of the social and political revolutions that swept Europe in the mid-1800s. It found its first flower in the paintings of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. Through detached, objective, and accurate observations, their paintings offered a restrained, but humane, view of the social imbalances and contradictions in contemporary society. While manifested in different ways, Realist artists shared guiding tenets.

• Rejected Romantic values — the idealized, the mystical, the exotic, and the subjective
• Celebrated the beauty of things as they are, in a detailed, unembellished manner
• Favored genre scenes showing the daily heroism of rural and urban workers
• Moved by the human condition and democratic values, they elevated the marginalized and oppressed

Realism took root in America as the United States experienced its own revolutions. As conflicts erupted on the Western frontier a horrific Civil War ravaged the East. Waves of immigration coupled with urbanization and industrialization saw the population shift from loose-knit agricultural communities to 12 major cities. Overcrowded housing, unsanitary conditions, and difficult working conditions followed. In the arts Romanticism’s optimistic lens and fantastic ideas gave way to a Realism that focused on common people and life’s realities.

These nine galleries exhibit the works of American Realist painters. Their genre paintings reflect the diversity in American life. Each gallery has four paintings, three by a Realist painter and one by another artist who shared an interest or style. Can you pick which painting is not like the others? Notice and Note will help you fine tune your observational skills and enhance your understanding of the art.

Of course, it is well to go abroad and see the works of the old masters, but Americans… must strike out for themselves, and only by doing this will we create a great and distinctly American art.

— Thomas Eakins

I will preach with my brush.

— Henry Ossawa Tanner

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

— John Singer Sargent

When you paint, try to put down exactly what you see. Whatever else you have to offer will come out anyway.

— Winslow Homer