L'Œuvre
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L'Oeuvre ("The Masterpiece") was an 1886 novel by Émile Zola (part of his twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart) that was a lightly fictionalized account of his childhood friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne, as the fictional painter "Claude Lantier" who fails in his life's work to create a work of art that would survive the ages. Lantier desires to paint a picture of a perfectly beautiful naked woman. Unfortunately, despite many efforts, he's never successful, so he kills himself. His desperate attempts to paint the perfect picture destroy both his family life and his friendship with other artists. The book includes a few autobiographical details. The story of Claude is set in a world of artists and those who trade their pictures and in general shows the struggle for art's liberation. Zola, as a young journalist, wrote many articles on art and he was deeply interested in newest ways of painting. Yet more convincing autobiographical thing is a character of a young writer whose ambition is to write a story of a family that would portray the present epoch. This character was definitely Zola's self portrait. The book ended the friendship between Cézanne and Zola.
External link
- Aruna D'Souza, ["Paul Cézanne, Claude Lantier, and Artistic Impotence."] In Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, autumn 2004.
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