Painting Contrast Between Realism Master Miller And Seqantini

Realism, born in Europe in the19thcentury, is a kind of art trendopposed to romanticism. As most works done by realist artists describeand criticize the obscure and dark society at that time, realism can becalled “critical realism”. Like Italian Master Caravaggio in15thand16thcentury, realist atrists present ordinary and lowly the poor in their works.Such method of expression shows extraordinary in the ordinary andtouches people’s soul by the life of the ordinary so that let people meditatewhether those seemly humble jobs can guarantee their living and moreimportant whether their contribution to the society seems as humble astheir jobs. Realism art was gestated by the Barbizon school of painters inthe scenery of nature while realism was growing maturely in the paintingsof Master Courbet and Miller. Humanistic ideology reflected in realist artsestablished two basic viewpoints of realism: one is the objectivity of theexternal world, which can not only be realized, but also be creatively presented; another is the usage of subjective feeling, which can loyallymanifest people’s realization to the outside world. Miller(1814-1875), asgreat realist and great pastoral painter in France in the19thcentury,devoted his life to describe farmers’ lives so as to be called “farmerpainter”. Born in a farmer’s family in Cherbourg village located in thecoast of Normandy in France, Miller enjoyed reading literary works andprefered painting so as to sketch the surrounding scenery in his free time.In addition, he was familiar with farmers’ lives, experienced the hard laborand had deep feelings of the land. His childhood determined his futureartistic direction and quality. He neither like politics nor served for theParis commune government and would not complain any social class.However, Miller became almost the only interpreter for farmers.Segantini’s theme, mainly based on farmers, painted their labor life inspring and pious attitude to life by using the herders in mountainous areasof the Alps as model. His representative work “Crossing the lake of SantaMaria Maggiore” reflects a picture of a little boat quietly floating onPulixiyanuo Lake in the backlight of dawn, loaded with sheep, a motherholding her child sitting in the bow and father gently paddling in the stern,which shows us a quiet, serene, evocative scene. This is not so much areligious story of painting, rather than a genre paintings reflect thefarmers’ life. In the mind of Segantini, farmer is Notre Dame.