Portrait of Emile Zola

Portrait of Émile Zola is a painting of Émile Zola by Édouard Manet. Manet submitted the portrait to the 1868 Salon. At this time Zola was known for his art criticism, and perhaps particularly as the writer of the novel Thérèse Raquin. This told the story of an adulterous affair between Thérèse, the wife of a clerk in a railway company, and a would-be painter named Laurent, whose work, rather like that of Zola's friend Paul Cézanne, is denigrated by the critics. In the eleventh chapter the milieu of Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe is evoked, in the murder scene, where Camille, the husband, goes out for the day with his wife and her lover to Saint-Ouen.

Portrait of Emile Zola

Portrait of Émile Zola is a painting of Émile Zola by Édouard Manet. Manet submitted the portrait to the 1868 Salon. At this time Zola was known for his art criticism, and perhaps particularly as the writer of the novel Thérèse Raquin. This told the story of an adulterous affair between Thérèse, the wife of a clerk in a railway company, and a would-be painter named Laurent, whose work, rather like that of Zola's friend Paul Cézanne, is denigrated by the critics. In the eleventh chapter the milieu of Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe is evoked, in the murder scene, where Camille, the husband, goes out for the day with his wife and her lover to Saint-Ouen.