Realism and the Gilded Age
After the Civil War, industries and fortunes grew, and artists depicted both modern life and the harsh realities of the sea and the human body.
After the Civil War the United States changed rapidly. Railways bound the continent together, industries grew and a new class of extremely wealthy families emerged. Mark Twain called the period the Gilded Age: glittering on the surface but often corrupt and unjust underneath. Art reflected both the wealth and its darker side.
Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins became the great realists of the age. Homer had drawn the Civil War for newspapers and went on to paint farmers, children and, above all, the sea and the fishermen of Maine. Eakins in Philadelphia studied anatomy and photography and painted rowers, boxers and doctors with a matter-of-factness that shocked his contemporaries.
Other Americans made their careers in Europe. James McNeill Whistler in London painted atmospheric nocturnes and maintained that art should exist for its own sake. John Singer Sargent became the portrait painter of the wealthy world. Mary Cassatt, the only American to exhibit with the Impressionists in Paris, depicted women and children in everyday life.