- Latest English Edition
- translator Roger Pearson, revising and editing
the 1950 translation of Thomas Walton. London: Oxford University Press,
World's Classics Paperbacks, 1993. [ISBN 0-19-282906-8]
- Summary
- A novel dealing with the world of Art, it is the tragic
story of Claude Lantier
(The Belly of Paris and
L'Assommoir), am ambitious and
talented young artist from the provinces who has come to
conquer Paris and is conquered by the flaws of his own genius.
Claude seems to be a composite sketch of both Paul Cezanne
(1839-1906) and Edouard Manet (1832-1883), while the novelist
character of Pierre Sandoz seems to be a portrait of the young
Zola in Paris during the 1860's.
- Commentary
- The Masterpiece is a confessional work and the most
autobiographically based of the Rougon-Macquart novels. In his
earliest plans for the book (1868), Zola described it as
"a poignant study of the artistic temperment in a contemporary
context" and the "terrible drama of a mind devouring itself."
Many of the Impressionist painters with whom he had worked and
struggled as a young man were offended by the book.
Paul Cezanne, Zola's childhood friend of over thirty years,
wrote briefly to thank him for his complimentary copy and
never spoke to him again. Claude Monet politely acknowledged
his gift, but found himself "troubled and uneasy" over the
story and the message it provided to the general public about
Impressionist painters.
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