Realism in art began as a movement in France. It emerged during the 1840s, amid political upheaval, industrial change, and growing interest in ordinary social life rather than idealized heroes or mythological subjects.
French artists such as Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot became associated with the movement. They portrayed laborers, peasants, urban residents, and everyday events with unidealized detail. Courbet’s large, uncompromising paintings made him the movement’s most prominent early advocate.
Realism was not simply a demand for photographic accuracy. It also challenged the academic hierarchy that gave history painting the highest status and often excluded humble contemporary subjects. Courbet’s A Burial at Ornans, shown at the Paris Salon of 1850–51, famously gave a provincial funeral the monumental scale traditionally reserved for religious or historical scenes.
Realism later spread across Europe and influenced related developments, including Russian social painting and the naturalist tendencies that preceded Impressionism. France is the canonical answer because the organized 19th-century movement first crystallized there, even though realistic representation has much older roots.