Naturalist Movement.

Naturalist thought emerged during the late 1860’s in France with the novels of the brothers Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt (Germinie Lacerteux, 1865; English translation, 1887) and of Émile Zola (Thérèse Raquin, 1867; English translation, 1881). Before the particular body of convictions that informed these early “naturalist” novels, a “naturalist” was understood to refer to someone working in the natural sciences. The term also had a philosophical meaning, referring to a doctrine that denied the existence of the metaphysical or supernatural and embraced the natural, material world. During the early nineteenth century “naturalism” acquired an aesthetic sense when French poet Charles Baudelaire used the term to refer (somewhat disparagingly) to a form of painting that sought to render nature faithfully.