Our Name
The term "Realist" or "Realism" has taken on myriad meanings in art history and contemporary art. However, we felt this term still best acknowledged the direction of the kind of art we aim to preserve and cultivate and therefore decided to name ourselves the Realist Art Resource. Under our use of the term "Realist" we like to group many movements and styles all of which sprung from skill-based training, these include: Academic Painting (think Bougeaureau and Bargue), French Realism (think Breton and Bastien-Lepage), Naturalism (Stanhope Forbes & Newlyn School), and the "Peredvizhniki" (think Repin and Levitan). Today these traditions are being carried on by painters who identify as being part of: Classical Realism, Contemporary Realism, Academic Realism, Postcontemporary Art, Traditional Realism, Figurative Art, Academic Realism, and again Realism. We hope that you enjoy these styles of painting as much as we do and will support them just by sharing the RAR website.

Charles Bargue. "A Bashi-Bazouk". 1875. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ilya Repin. "Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin." 1884. Gift of Humanities Fund Inc., 1972. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jules Breton. "A Peasant Girl Knitting". ca. 1870. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Charles Bargue. "A Bashi-Bazouk". 1875. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.