Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre works specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on.

Genre painting

Genre painting, also called genre scene or petit genre, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. These depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class. Everyday life is the sum total of every aspect of common human life as it is routinely lived. ... Bourgeoisie (RP [], GA []) in modern use refers to the ruling class in a capitalist society. ... The middle class (or middle classes) comprises a social group once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry. ...

Peasant Dance, c. 1568, oil on wood, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Genre themes appear in nearly all art traditions. Painted decorations in ancient Egyptian tombs often depict banquets, recreation, and agrarian scenes, and even medieval prayer books such as the Book of Hours (see Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc De Berry) are decorated with "peasant" scenes of daily life. The Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder made peasants and their activites the subject of many of his paintings, and genre painting was to flourish in Northern Europe in Brueghel's wake. Adriaen and Isaac van Ostade, David Teniers, Aelbert Cuyp, Johannes Vermeer and Pieter De Hooch were among the many painters specializing in genre subjects in the Netherlands during the 17th century. The generally small scale of these artists' paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Pieter Brueghel may be: Pieter Brueghel the Elder Pieter Brueghel the Younger, his son This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... A illuminated page from the Très Riches Heures showing the day for exchanging gifts from the month of January A Book of Hours is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. ... Raphael was famous for depicting illustrious figures of the Classical past with the features of his Renaissance contemporaries. ... Bruegels The Painter and The Connoisseur drawn c. ... Peasants in a Tavern by Adriaen van Ostade (c. ... A Winter Scene by Isaac van Ostade (c. ... Teniers was the name of a family of Flemish artists who flourished at Antwerp and Brussels during the 17th century. ... The Negro Page Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp (Dordrecht October 20, 1620 - Dordrecht November 15, 1691) was one of the leading Dutch landscape painters of the 17th century. ... Milkmaid (1658-1660) Johannes Vermeer or Jan Vermeer (baptized October 31, 1632, died December 15, 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of ordinary bourgeois life. ... Musical Party in a Courtyard (1677) Pieter de Hooch (pronounced , also spelled Hoogh or Hooghe) (1629 - 1684) was a genre painter during the Dutch Golden Age. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ...

In Italy, a "school" of genre painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer in 1625. He acquired the nickname "Il Bamboccio" and his followers were called the Bamboccianti, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti, Antonio Cifrondi, and Giuseppe Maria Crespi among many others. Nickname: The Eternal City Location of the city of Rome (yellow) within the Province of Rome (red) and region of Lazio (grey) Coordinates: Region Lazio Province Province of Rome Founded 8th century BC Mayor Walter Veltroni Area    - City 1,285 km²  (496. ... Pieter van Laer (or Laar) (1613 - c. ... Giuseppe Crespi (born 1665 in Bologna, Italy; died 1747), called Lo Spagnuolo, was a late Baroque painter of the Bolognese School. ...

Louis le Nain was an important exponent of genre painting in 17th century France, where the 18th century would bring a heightened interest in the depiction of everyday life, whether through the romanticized paintings of Watteau and Fragonard, or the careful realism of Chardin. Antoine, Louis, and Mathieu Le Nain were painters in early 17th century France. ... Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ... The Mona Lisa is one of the most recognizable artistic paintings in the Western world. ... Jean-Antoine Watteau (October 10, 1684 - July 18, 1721) was a French Rococo painter. ... The Bathers, 1765 Inspiration, 1769 The Reader, c. ... Realism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation. ... Self portrait. ...

In England, William Hogarth conveyed social criticism and moral lessons through canvases that told stories of ordinary people, often in serial form. The Spanish artist Francisco de Goya used genre painting as a medium for dark commentary on the human condition. Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ... William Hogarth, self-portrait, 1745 William Hogarth (November 10, 1697 – October 26, 1764) was a major English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited as a pioneer in western sequential art. ... This article is about Francisco Goya, a Spanish painter. ...

Japanese ukiyo-e paintings are rich in depictions of people at leisure and at work, as are Korean paintings, particularly those created in the 18th century. View of Mount Fuji from Satta Point in the Suruga Bay, ukiyo-e by Hiroshige, published 1859 Ukiyo-e ), pictures of the floating world, is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints produced between the 17th and the 20th century, featuring motifs of landscapes, the theater and pleasure quarters. ...

With the decline of religious and historical painting in the 19th century, artists increasingly found their subject matter in the life around them. Realists such as Gustave Courbet upset expectations by depicting everyday scenes in huge paintings—at the scale traditionally reserved for "important" subjects—thus blurring the boundary which had set genre painting apart as a "minor" category. Subsequently the Impressionists, as well as such 20th century artists as Pierre Bonnard, Edward Hopper, and David Park painted scenes of daily life, but in the context of modern art the term "genre painting" has come to be associated mainly with painting of an especially anecdotal or sentimental nature, painted in a traditionally realistic technique. The works of American painter Ernie Barnes and those of illustrator Norman Rockwell could exemplify a more modern type of genre painting. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Realism in art and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear, without embellishment or interpretation. ... Gustave Courbet (portrait by Nadar). ... Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists who began publicly exhibiting their art in the 1860s. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... The Dining Room in the Country Pierre Bonnard (October 3, 1867 – January 23, 1947) was a French painter and printmaker. ... Nighthawks. ... David Park (1911-1960) - Bay Area figurative painter David Park was part of the post-WWII alumnae of the San Francisco Art Institute (then the California Art School) He revived an interest in figurative art, at first experimenting with still-abstracted forms that relied on colour for their impact, dynamics... Ernest Eugene Barnes Jr. ... Norman Rockwell Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was a 20th century American painter. ...

Genre paintings have been created wherever artists seek to record the everyday experiences of the ordinary person. Today, genre paintings can also provide a window into the everyday life of a bygone era.

Genre photography

Woman playing a shamisen, 1860s, hand-coloured albumen silver print by Felice Beato

While genre painting began, in the 17th century, with representations by Europeans of European life, the invention and early development of photography coincided with the most expansive and aggressive era of European imperialism, in the mid-to-late 19th century, and so genre photographs, typically made in the proximity of military, scientific and commercial expeditions, often also depict the people of other cultures that Europeans encountered throughout the world. Kitagawa Utamaro, Flowers of Edo: Young Womans Narrative Chanting to the Samisen, ca. ... Felice Beato, self-portrait, c. ...

Although the distinctions are not clear, genre works should be distinguished from ethnographic studies, which are pictorial representations resulting from direct observation and descriptive study of the culture and way of life of particular societies, and which constitute one class of products of such disciplines as anthropology and the behavioural sciences. Ethnography (from the Greek ethnos = nation and graphein = writing) refers to the genre of writing that presents qualitative description of human social phenomena, based on fieldwork. ... Anthropology (from the Greek word , human or person) consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). ... Behavioural sciences (or Behavioral science) is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that explores the behaviour and strategies within and between organisms in the natural world. ...

See also

• Hierarchy of genres
• Genre

A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different types of genres in an art-form in terms of their value. ... Look up genre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

References

• Art & Architecture Thesaurus, s.v. "genre". Accessed 2 November 2006.
• Art & Architecture Thesaurus, s.v. "ethnographic objects". Accessed 2 November 2006.
• Art & Architecture Thesaurus, s.v. "ethnography". Accessed 2 November 2006.
• Banta, Melissa. 'Life of a Photograph : Nineteenth-Century Photogaphs of Japan from the Peabody Museum and Wellesley College Museum'. In 'A Timely Encounter: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Japan' (ex. cat.; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press, 1988), 12.
• Banta, Melissa, and Susan Taylor, eds. ‘A Timely Encounter: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Japan’ (ex. cat.; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press, 1988).