Figurative Painting

Dictionary entry

1. Romanticism c. 1790–1850 / Style

   Romanticism pushed beyond reason and rule toward emotion, the sublime, overwhelming nature, revolution and exceptional events through dramatic light, diagonal force, turbulent brushwork and extreme scale.

2. Realism c. 1840s–1880s / Style

   Nineteenth-century Realism replaced myth, idealization and heroic drama with contemporary workers, peasants, urban life and familiar places, changing which subjects could occupy serious large-scale art.

3. Naturalism c. 1870s–1900 / Style

   Naturalism extended Realism's contemporaneity through close observation of how environment, heredity and working conditions shape bodies and behavior, often using outdoor light and causally legible detail.

4. Academic Art 17th–late 19th century / Style

   Academic art joined institutional training in drawing, anatomy and the antique to a hierarchy of subjects, controlled contours, ideal bodies, legible historical narratives and polished surfaces that conceal the brush.

5. Return to Order 1918–1930s / Style

   An international post-World War I tendency that stepped back from avant-garde fragmentation and speed toward classical contour, stable figures, still life, and legible space. It retained modern simplification while recovering weight and order rather than reconstructing the past literally.

6. Ashcan School c. 1900–1915 / Style

   An early-twentieth-century New York urban realism that raised crowded streets, saloons, theaters, and working neighborhoods into major subjects through the speed of newspaper illustration and a dark, rough paint surface.

7. Bay Area Figurative Movement 1950s–1960s / Style

   Bay Area painting that returned to figures, rooms, cities, and landscapes without abandoning Abstract Expressionism's broad marks and thick color fields; figure and ground carry the same painterly pressure.

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