Edouard Manet: Portrait of Emile Zola (1868, Musee d'Orsay, Paris)
Emile Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse.
Zola's novels about the Rougon-Macquart family, widely read through - served as vehicles for their author's political and social views rather than for subtle social interplay. He had a love of set-piece descriptions involving cumulative concrete details, and for these, his imagination was certainly nourished by painting, sometimes by specific Impressionist canvases. 'The Masterpiece' by Zola was an exploration of Paris's artistic milieu. Zola created in his central character, Claude Lantier, an experimental painter impotent to realize his potential or his dream; this was interpreted by some of his old friends as a direct slur on Impressionism, and by Paul Cezanne, as the ultimate betrayal. While a passage in 'A Love Affair' (1878) was directly based on an idyllic garden scene by Renoir; 'L'Assomoir' had some descriptions of communal laundry based on Edgar Degas's evocative studies of Laundresses.
The most famous association of Degas was with the Impressionist painter, Edouard Manet, who created his portrait, an artistic masterpiece. This portrait of Zola is essentially a Japanese work, achieved with the aid of exotic props, and more signficantly, by its pictorial organization. The shallow space, silhouetted figured, and strong decorative elements of repeated flat shapes and rectangles parallel th the painting's edge.
It is also a statement of Manet's eclecticism: Japan and Spain appear together (represented by Kuniaki's Wrestler, above and Velazquez's Little Cavaliers), framed above the desk, and joined by Manet's Olympia, itself a hybrid of old and new. The open book is Manet's copy of Blanc's Histoire des Peintures- a valuable source of older art for Manet.
