1. Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style (ca. 1850–1900)
Chapter 30
Industry, Empire,
and the Realist Style
(ca. 1850–1900)

2. The Global Dominion of the West
During the second half of the nineteenth century, as Western industrialization accelerated, Realism came to rival Romanticism both as a style and as an attitude of mind.
Western industrialism and the materialistic values with which it was allied, precipitated imperialism and colonialism, both of which had a shaping influence on the non-Western world. The heavy hand of Western imperialism in some parts of Africa, Asia, and in the Middle East had a crippling effect on independent growth and productivity.
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3. Nineteenth-Century Social Theory
The ideologies of liberalism, conservatism, utilitarianism, and socialism offered varying solutions to nineteenth-century social and economic inequities. Marxist communism called for violent proletarian revolution that would end private ownership of the means of economic production.
The leading proponent of liberalism, John Stuart Mill, defended the exercise of individual liberty as protected by the state.
Mill’s opposition to the subordination of women gave strong support to nineteenth-century movements for women’s rights.
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Realism in Literature
In the arts, Realism emerged as a style concerned with recording contemporary subject matter in true-to-life terms.
Such novelists as Dickens in England, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Russia, Flaubert and Zola in France, and Twain and Chopin in America described contemporary social conditions sympathetically and with fidelity to detail.
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5. Realism in Literature (continued)
Flaubert and Chopin provided alternatives to Romantic idealism in their realistic characterizations of female figures.
Zola’s naturalistic novels pictured human beings as determined by hereditary and sociological factors, while Ibsen’s fearless portrayal of class and gender opened a new chapter in modern drama.
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6. Realism in the Visual Arts
Photography and lithography were invented during the nineteenth century; both encouraged artists to produce objective records of their surroundings.
By the mid-nineteenth century the camera was used to document all aspects of contemporary life as well as to provide artists with detailed visual data.
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7. Realism in the Visual Arts (continued)
In painting, Courbet led the Realist movement with canvases depicting the activities of humble and commonplace men and women, while Daumier employed the new technique of lithography to show his deep concern for political and social conditions in rapidly modernizing France.
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8. Realism in the Visual Arts (continued)
With the landmark paintings Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia, Édouard Manet shocked public taste by modernizing classical subjects and violating conventional painting techniques.
American Realism embraced the trompe l’oeil paintings of William Harnett, the unorthodox subjects of Thomas Eakins, and the powerful compositions of Winslow Homer.
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9. Late Nineteenth- Century Architecture
Paxton’s Crystal Palace, the world’s first prefabricated cast-iron structure, offered a prophetic glimpse into the decades that would produce steel-framed skyscrapers.
In an age of advancing industrialism, ornamental structures such as the Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower gave way to functional ones. Inevitably, the skyscraper would become the prime architectural expression of modern corporate power and the urban scene.
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Realism in Music
Verismo opera departed from Romantic tradition by seeking to capture the lives of men and women with a truth to nature comparable to that of Realist novels and paintings.
In the opera Madame Butterfly, the Italian “verist” Giacomo Puccini presented a timely view of America’s imperialistic presence in Asia.
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