The Masterpiece

First serialized in French in 1885, Émile Zola’s “The Masterpiece” is the story of naturalist painter Claude Lantier and is believed to be a highly fictionalized account of Zola’s real-life friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne. The fictional artist of Zola’s Bohemian world, Lantier, strives to complete a great work that will reflect his own talent and genius as a revolutionary, but struggles greatly in living up to his artistic potential. The story was perhaps too personal for Cézanne, whose correspondence with Zola ended immediately after the novel’s publication. Nevertheless, this story of the misunderstood artist, brilliant but scorned by the intolerant art-going public, and their unwillingness to abandon traditional practices, epitomizes the attitudes of bohemian revolutionaries and is an enduring example of nineteenth-century French naturalism. This edition includes a biographical afterword and follows the translation of Edward Vizetelly.