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Emile Zola The masterpeice

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Peter Smith

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My apologies if everyone on the planet but me already knows all about this!  I have bought an English translation of Emile Zola's 'The Masterpiece' , the book he wrote in 1868 about the early Impressionist period and believed to have been based on Cezanne. I'm only a third of the way through but I'm loving it, it brings things like the Salon des Refuses to life as it does the Paris of the day. Reading about artists is all vey well but in this book you can taste the dust and smell the Seine....it's fantastic. When I've finished it I'll post again but in the meantime has anyone else read it, and if so what did you think?

Norrette Moore

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It's in my Complete Works of Zola on my Kindle.  The version in there has an interesting introduction (I havent read it myself):
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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Thank you very much for this introduction to a Zola novel I've never read - it's a pity that Cézanne was negative about a novel which was, presumably, as much of an artistic oeuvre as anything that he ever attempted; but painters do tend to be a bit prickly (possibly I over-identify here).  I have a small mountain of books to get through, and at 75 this year am wondering if I'm going to make it - but I'll have a go.  
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Peter Smith

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My sister warned me that it would be hard going but it isn't....mind you, she was reading it in French just to show off!! 
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Peter Smith

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I finished the book last night....Zola certainly didn't feel much affection for his characters given the way he treated them.  It's the little details that fascinate me, such the the Buffet at the Salon serving appalling food - you don't read that in art histories.    I thought to begin with that Zola was like a French Dickens but I don't remember there being so much sex in 'Bleak House'!

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by Peter Smith

With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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I haven't read this book yet - said that before, I know - but Zola's general aim seems to have been to point out just how ghastly life can be, and was, for his protagonists; the French novelists (try Flaubert, too) were a bit earthier than Dickens could ever be, because of English prudery; so not a lot of sex in Dickens, though quite a lot was inferred - or I may mean implied.  Madame Bovary, for instance, is not a book I can imagine an English writer being able to write at that time.    Plus, Dickens was a bit earlier, having died in 1870. If the French were ahead of us before Dickens' death, they'd be even further ahead nearly twenty years later (if that makes any sense).  Now you've read the book, do you sympathize more with Cézanne, or Zola?  Or neither?  

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by Robert Jones, Napa

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Peter Smith

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It's interesting Robert but I sympathise more with Zola....I don't admire Cezanne as an artist and now as a man either. Parts of the character are based on Manet and Monet, it's a bit of a mixture and it's interesting picking out which bits refer to which artist. Manet's 'Dejuner sur l'herbe' is a clear reference. It's the background stuff that I found most fascinating, reading about what it was actually like behind the scenes setting up the salon...basically organised chaos! It's all very well reading about it in modern art books but Zola was actually there.

Sandesh Khule

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Oh!! Will surely have to give it a read. 
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Peter Smith

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You'll enjoy it. Amazon have the English translation at a reasonable price. 

Norrette Moore

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Co-incidentally, a new book in the same vein is released The Artist Guardian review