This book – the first ever comprehensive and critical survey of the subject – demonstrates that, contrary to received ideas, realism has had a continuous yet restlessly changing place in American and European painting over the last hundred years – from Eakins, Bellows and Homer, through Vuillard, Bonnard, Schiele, Morandi, Hopper and Giacometti, to Balthus, Lucian Freud and David Hockney.

Brendan Prendeville discusses the historical, artistic and critical contexts in which painting has taken a realist turn, from the Ashcan School to Soviet Socialist Realism, from the painting of the Existentialist era and the time of Photorealism to the most recent developments today.

This is an erudite and superbly illustrated survey of a continuingly vital part of contemporary art.


ISBN 0500203369