Art style of the late 19th century. Like realism it depicts only the visible reality. The artist strictly follows the natural model without any intention to interprete. Reality is shown lifelike without any idealization. Thus also motifs from ordinary people's life or from the working world belong to the popular themes of naturalism.
Genre paintings in the closer sense depict everyday scenes of rural, bourgeois or courtly life. Here the term Genre is extended to all areas of human life. The early Genre paintings represent their motifs realistically, however oftentimes the image contents are to be understood as allegories, sometimes even as moralising artworks either praising idylls or denouncing human misconduct. Later in the 19th century the realistic component was brought again to the fore.