Ville-d’Avray: Entrance to the Wood. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Ville-d’Avray: Entrance to the Wood
Oil on canvas 46 x 35cm
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
1825
Realism, Romanticism
The fresh colour and deftly observed play of light and shadow on the rutted track make this one of Corot's most attractive landscapes. The warm hues of the seated figure catch the eye, as do the flourishing branches of the central prominent tree. Corot was very familiar with the country around Ville-d'Avray, for his family lived in this small town to the west of Paris. This painting was probably made just before Corot left for Italy in 1825. It was retouched around 1850. The composition and treatment of light may also reflect the artist's response to Constable's paintings, exhibited in Paris in the mid 1820s.
Realism
Movement in mid- to late 19th-century art, in which an attempt was made to create objective representations of the external world based on the impartial observation of contemporary life. Realism was consciously democratic, including in its subject-matter and audience activities and social classes previously considered unworthy of representation in high art. The most coherent development of Realism was in French painting, where it centred on the work of Gustave Courbet, who used the word réalisme as the title for a manifesto that accompanied an exhibition of his works in 1855. Though its influence extended into the 20th century its later manifestations are usually labelled as Social Realism.
Romanticism
1770 - 1850
Dominant cultural tendency in the Western world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It caused a re-evaluation of the nature of art and the role of the artist in society. Significantly, from the 1790s it was a self-proclaimed movement, the first such, and so initiated a tradition that has remained in Western culture since. Romanticism was rejected or ignored by most of the major artists later seen as associated with it, but it nevertheless identified several key tendencies of the period. Though hard to define precisely, it essentially involves: 1) placing emotion and intuition before (or at least on an equal footing with) reason; 2) a belief that there are crucial areas of experience neglected by the rational mind; and 3) a belief in the general importance of the individual, the personal and the subjective. In fact it embodies a critique of that faith in progress and rationality that had characterized the main trend of Western thought and action since the Renaissance.
Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/realism/m010vqr6v?categoryid=art-movement