naturalism
In the arts generally, an approach that advocates the factual and realistic representation of the subject of a painting or novel with no stylization.
Specifically, naturalism refers to a movement in literature and drama that developed as a reaction to the mannered, conventional and heavily stylized approach to all the arts favoured in the 18th century.
Naturalism in art
Painters such as
Constable and the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood worked outdoors, directly from their subject matter, but also demonstrate the extremes to which naturalism could be taken. The English Pre-Raphaelite painter Holman
Hunt stunned sheep (by hurling them to the ground) so they would stay still enough to paint, and burnt a dead horse in his garden to obtain its skeleton.
Naturalism in theatre and film
The search for naturalism in acting was begun by Russian theatre teacher
Stanislavsky. This ended in an obsession with finding completely authentic stage scenery and properties (required to assist the actor in sustaining a role). While increased theatre costs put an end to this kind of extravagance, in Europe, in the 1950s, the wealthier US companies under directors like Elia
Kazan continued to craft elaborate naturalistic performances, supported by the New York Actors' Studio. The US film industry provided the opportunity to extend this work, leading to actors like increasing their weight to play a part or spending weeks in a wheelchair to understand a character's psychology.
Literary naturalism
While not as extreme as naturalism in art and drama, naturalist novelists became embroiled in social debate. In France in the late 19th century the writings of Emile
Zola and the brothers
Goncourt, and in England, Charles
Dickens, naturalistic writing often held that people's fates were determined by heredity, environment, and social forces beyond their control, leading to campaigns for reform.
| Zola, the chief theorist of the movement, demonstrates the characteristic accuracy of reportage in his Rougon-Macquart sequence of novels (1871–93), which shows the working of heredity and environment in one family. Other naturalist writers include Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet in France, Gerhart Hauptmann in Germany, and Theodore Dreiser in the USA. |
naturalism
| In art, the accurate, factual representation of people, places, and objects. Taken to the extreme, the most realistic painting is trompe l'oeil art, which intends to ‘trick the eye’ into believing an object is real. In the 19th century a French literary movement, led by the novelist and social reformer Émile Zola, greatly influenced art theory, claiming that naturalism challenged the conventional distinctions between ‘high’ art, previously classed as ‘beautiful’, and ‘low’ art, regarded as ‘unseemly’ and ‘ugly’. |
| Although the terms realism and naturalism can be interchangeable when referring to accurate representation, the term Realism also refers specifically to a mid-19th-century art movement. |
