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Emile Zola and French Impressionism

Author(s): M. Douglas Kimball


Source: The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, Vol. 23, No. 2
(Jun., 1969), pp. 51-57
Published by: Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346694
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EMILE ZOLA AND FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM

M. DOUGLAS KIMBALL

M. Douglas Kimball (B.A. and M.A., University of Utah; Ph.D. in progress


at Brigham Young University) is presently an instructor in French at Brigham
Young University. He is serving as chairman of the French and Italian lit-
erature section for the 1969 annual meeting in Provo. The following article
shows Zola's fascination with the physical sciences, especially as they were
affecting the Impressionist painters of his time.

April 27, 1866, was a day of excitement in Paris, at least for the patrons
and amateurs of art who were anticipating the forthcoming annual exhibit
of painting. The newspaper Evenement, predecessor of the Figaro, was
featuring its first major article on the affair which was responsible in no
small measure for the animation of the crowds. The writer had not only
dispensed with the flattering formalities customarily addressed to the officials
and judges of such events but had, on the contrary, taken the dignitaries to
task in rather bold terms.

An exhibition in our day is not the work of artists, it is the work of a jury.
Therefore, I concern myself above all with the jury, the author of these long,
livid rooms in which are displayed under the harsh light, all of the timid
mediocrities and all of the stolen reputations.... This group of men is placed
between the artists and the public. With their all-powerful authority they
only show a third indeed only a fourth of the truth; they amputate art and
present nothing more of it to the crowd than the mutilated cadaver .... If I
were a needy painter, my greatest concern would be who I might have for a
judge, in order to paint according to his tastes.1

With these words among others, Emile Zola began his rather turbulent
career as an art critic.
Three days later in a second article Zola explained that it was the School
of Realism which had been rejected arbitrarily by the judges, and declared
himself to be the defender and spokesman of that group. The painters he
had in mind were Manet, Monet, and others who had exposed their works
at the Salon des Refuses of 1863. In 1874 these men became known as
Impressionists after a private showing by Monet of a painting entitled "Im-
pression of the Rising Sun."
In this first series of articles Zola had a great deal more to say, and in
flattering terms, about the artists who had been rejected by the judges than
about those who actually exhibited their works. The Evenement refused to
allow him to cover the exhibit the following year but the fiery critic sought
and found other outlets for his writing.
With the passage of time Zola became a more articulate critic, in part
'Emile Zola, Salons, ed. F. W. I. Hemmings and R. J. Niess (Paris: Librairie
Minard, 1959), pp. 50-52. The translations are those of the writer except where others
are specifically designated.

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52 RMMLA BULLETN JUNE 1969

because he was reflecting the ideas of the artists themselves with whom he
was constantly associating. He defined Impressionism as "a more exact
search for the causes and effects of light which have as much influence upon
the form of an object as upon its color.... It is the study of light in its
thousands of decompositions and recompositions."2 This preoccupation with
natural light brought the painters out of the studios where they had been
using a single source of unchanging illumination into the open air where the
form and color of objects change from instant to instant with the movement
of the sun or with the fleeting passage of clouds. The difficulties with which
the artist must contend are apparent even to the casual observer. In order
to capture one of these moments, the painter must make very rapid color
sketches on the canvas itself. If the painting is large, the difficulties are
compounded.
For the Impressionists, color does not exist by itself in nature. It is the
irradiation of light composed of the same elements as sunlight, that is, the
seven tones of the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and
violet. These colors are alternately decomposed and recomposed on every
object depending upon the inclination of the rays which governs the intensity
of the light and the color. Shadow is rendered not by the absence of color
in contrast to its presence, as practiced by the established artists of the day,
but rather by the exchange of luminous waves between objects which forms
a scale of complementary tones between them; this is called the law of
values. In speaking of Manet, Zola said: "A single rule has guided him,
the law of values, the manner in which a being or an object behaves in
light! ... It is the light which sketches as much as it colors, it is the light
which places each thing in its place, which is the very life of the painted
scene."3 In order to abide by the law of values the artist must maintain
the integrity of the scale of tones. "If you start on a note which is lighter
than the real one you must follow a scale which is consistently lighter; the
opposite must take place when you start on a darker note."4 Zola felt that
only Corot, Courbet, and Manet had been able to comply with this law.
The scale of tones was not achieved by a careful mixing of colors on the
palette before they were applied. Rather the pure colors of the spectrum
were juxtaposed on the canvas leaving the rays of each color to blend with
the others at a certain distance, thus acting like the sunlight on the eye of
the observer.
One advantage of this technique is that each color, while blending
with the others, still retains its own strength, freshness, and brilliancy. The
critics and the public of that time, however, found the hues too fresh and
too brilliant. They characterized the art with such adjectives as coarse,
violent, raw, and acrid.

2Ibid., pp. 240-242.


3lbid., p. 260.
4bid., p. 90.

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EMILE ZOLA AND FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM 53

Since light is the true subject of Impressionist painting, the object


painted is of secondary concern. "The subject for the true artists is but a
pretext for painting, while for the masses the subject alone exists."5 Manet
was particularly attracted to nude studies because of the possibilities pro-
vided for the analysis of the effects of light. When he exhibited his painting
"Luncheon on the Grass" with its life-size figures and beautiful landscape,
the public saw only a disgustingly realistic nude without any of the cus-
tomary trappings of antiquity to make her presence acceptable.
For the Impressionists, the subject of a painting had no philosophical
or literary purpose. "Some of the established painters," said Zola, "relate
the fable of la Fontaine, the wolf and the lamb. They are men of letters
gone astray, people who believe they renew art because they don't paint
anymore at all and because they use a brush as if it were a pen."6 Such
works were usually painted in the studio from notes and drawings made
at another time and place. The Impressionists, on the other hand, were like
scientists inquiring with their eyes what a particular landscape looked like
and painting only from visual sensations. Nothing was allowed to obstruct
the on-the-spot visual analysis. There was no narration or illustration; moral
and intellectual values were excluded. The sketchy, unfinished effect of
their paintings led the uninitiated to see their work as highly subjective
when in fact theirs was the pragmatic task of finding the means of making
their paintings more truly representative of visual reality.
Zola's novelistic career paralleled his activities as an art critic. The first
novel was published just one year before he wrote the Salon of 1866. The
twentieth and last novel of the Rougon-Macquart series appeared three
years before the final Salon which was written for the exhibition of 1896
in the Figaro. All his novels contain traces of Impressionism, even those
which by virtue of their settings and other elements would seem the least
likely to do so. The writer has chosen one novel for consideration in which
Impressionism is not only an important component of form but is also the
subject of the work. I refer to the fourteenth novel of the Rougon-Macquart
series entitled The Masterpiece, which was published in 1886.
In this book, another chapter in the ever-expanding body of art criti-
cism, Zola treats the life of the fictitious painter who founds the Impressionist
School. The artist struggles with the problem of creation, with the lack of
understanding on the part of the established artists and critics, with poverty,
and with the temptation of concession of principles in order to acquire
recognition and wealth. Equally important, however, are the studies of the
effects of light through the analysis or description of Parisian landscapes.
Each scene is depicted at a different time of day or in a particular season
or under various weather conditions. Occasionally a given panorama is

5Ibid., p. 96.
6Ibid., p. 157.

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54 RMMLA BULETINm JUNE 1969

described more than once but because of the inconstancy of light no two
portrayals are ever the same; no two consecutive minutes ever alike.
The sun was the chief source of light for the Impressionists. Much in
the new art depended upon the proximity of the life-giving sphere and its
relative position with respect to the earth. Zola takes note of the change in
the angle of incidence of the sun's rays with the passing of time. During
the early winter the sun would set on the distant misty lake of the horizon.

As its disc reddened to the deepest purple it would pass out of sight in the
depths of the lake transformed into a pool of blood. After February, as the
curve of the decline increased, it would fall straight into the Seine, which
seemed to boil on the horizon at the touch of the red-hot disc.

The sun reaches its greatest intensity at midday during the late summer.
Zola has Claude Lantier, the hero of the novel, paint an urban scene at that
particular time.

His subject was a view of the Place du Carrousel. ... He showed a cab
ambling across in the quivering heat, the driver drowsing on his box, and the
horse, head down, perspiring between the shafts, while the passers-by were
apparently staggering along on the pavements, all except one young woman
who, all fresh and rosy under her parasol, swept with the ease of a queen
through the fiery air which was clearly her natural element. But the really
startling thing about the picture was its original treatment of light, breaking
it down into its components after uncompromising accuracy of observation,
but deliberately contradicting all the habits of the eye by stressing blues,
yellows and reds in places where no one expected to see them. In the back-
ground, the Tuileries melted away into a golden mist; the pavements were
blood-red and the passers-by were merely indicated by a number of darker
patches, swallowed up by the overbright sunshine.8

All the elements of Impressionism are here. The subject of the painting is
the light itself, the principal object being the young woman with the parasol.
She is portrayed with precision while the other objects which command
only the peripheral view of the spectator are hazy and indistinct in accord-
ance with visual reality. The colors are those of the spectrum without arti-
ficial softening or blending.
The time of day which, in many respects, presents the greatest challenge
to the painter is sunset. Not only does it provide him with rapidly changing
effects relative to color and form, it also represents a period when contrasts
are extremely prominent. Zola devotes numerous interesting passages of
the novel to descriptions of evening landscapes. When one stood to the east
of Notre Dame, for instance, and looked toward the west, the famous church
appeared as an "enormous crouching beast with flying-buttress legs, raising

7Emile Zola, The Masterpiece, trans. Thomas Walton (New York: The Macmillan
Company, n.d.), pp. 14-15.
8Ibid., pp. 207, 208.

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EMILE ZOLA AND FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM 55

its head of twin towers at the end of its lengthy monster's spine."9 The
author then allows his perceptive glance to shift to the left in the direction
of the Seine where "the slanting rays of the setting sun cast over the houses
on the right bank a dusting of warm gold while on the left bank . . the
buildings stood out black against the flaming glory of the west."'1 As the
counterclockwise sweep of the author's gaze continues, it begins to take in
objects which are less boldly silhouetted against the sun. Those which are
still receiving direct illumination appear in photographic precision while
those which are only partially lit assume a sort of supernatural aspect. "The
Pavilion de Flore standing out like a citadel . . . looked like a dream castle
rising, smoky blue, airy and quivering against the rosy mists of the horizon."l'
A moment later the Pavilion had solidified into reality in a final surge of
direct light from the setting sun.
Weather conditions often modify and make more startling the effects
of the expiring sun. Precipitation is an important phenomenon in this re-
gard, particularly rain. "One evening in an unexpected shower, the sun,
as it reappeared through the falling rain, lit up every cloud in the sky, mak-
ing the rain overhead glow like liquid fire shot through with pink and blue."12
Here the light is greatly intensified by refraction through the water droplets
which act as tiny individual prisms.
As in the case of rain, the wind can augment the astonishing play of
the sun's rays. Zola surveys the sky on an evening when the zephyr was
hurrying the puffy cumulus clouds quickly across the sky. They appeared
as "waves of sulphur breaking on boulders of coral, places, towers and
buildings piled up in a blazing heap or crumbling down as torrents of lava
poured through the gaps in their walls."l3 In its vertical swing, the author's
eye is arrested at the base of the clouds which he equates with a sea of
sulphur. A little higher the eye perceives the orange of the coral reefs upon
which the swells are breaking. At the highest point of the panorama he
sees the glowing lava created by the more direct and consequently more
intense illumination of the sun. Thus without making any direct reference
to the colors themselves, he presents the top three tones of the spectrum
with regard to intensity.
Zola could not refrain from investigating the possibilities offered by night-
time for the study of the effects of light. It was under a black sky filled with
a violent electrical storm that Claude, the struggling artist, met Christine
who would assume the successive roles of model, mistress, and wife of the
painter. It was quite by chance that she sought shelter from the downpour
under the archway of the entrance to his studio just as he was returing

9Ibid p. 103.
'0Ibi., pp. 103, 104.
"Ibid., pp. 104, 105.
1Ibid., p. 105.
13Ibid., p. 106.

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56 RMMLA BULLEIN JUNE 1969

home. When they both reached the protective structure there was a flash
of lightning. Paris appeared as

a purple-white vision of a nightmare city.... On the far bank of the


Seine the irregular roofs of the row of little grey houses on the Quai des
Ormes stood out against the sky, while their doors and the shutters of the
little shops made their lower half a patchwork of bright colors. On the
left a wider horizon opened up as far as the blue slate gables of the
H6tel de Ville and on the right to the lead covered dome of Saint Pau's
church. What really took her breath away though, was the Seine, the
way it was built in, and flowed so darkly through its narrow bed, be-
tween the solid piers of the Pont-Marie and the lighter arches of the
new Pont Louis-Philippe.... A flash and all was gone.

The lightning flashed again revealing the city once more, lurid this time,
baleful and spattered with blood. It was one enormous trench hacked
through the glowing embers of a fire, with the river flowing along it
from end to end, as far as the eye could see. The minutest details were
clearly visible. You could pick out the little window-shutters on the
Quai des Ormes and the narrow slits of the Rue de la Masure and the
Rue du Paon-Blanc breaking the line of houses; near the Pont-Marie,
where those huge plane-trees provided such a magnificent patch of
greenery, you might have counted every single leaf. In the other direc-
tion, under the Pont Louis-Philippe, the flat river barges moored four
deep along the Mail, piled high with yellow apples, were a blaze of
gold.14

The first bolt of lightning is clearly less intense than the second. In the
first instance the low intensity colors of the spectrum are visible: blue,
indigo, and the complementary gray resulting from the other two. In the
second flash the high intensity colors dominate: red, orange, yellow, and
green. In one direction only precise details are visible: window-shutters
and leaves on the trees. In the other the river barges lose their contours in
the blaze of gold emanating from the yellow apples. Zola perceives these
scenes with the sensual receptivity of an Impressionist painter. To capture
such fleeting moments and fix them permanently to a canvas in all of their
transient vitality would constitute the ultimate challenge for the artist.
The Impressionists were, in many respects, like today's free-lance photog-
raphers who strive to be in the right place at the proper time with a loaded
camera. The photographer hopes his lens opening and shutter speed will
be properly adjusted for any contingency. The Impressionist had to have
his palette perfectly prepared and his brushes poised. Monet achieved much
of his success in capturing the transient effects of light on the Seine by work-
ing from a small, drifting boat fitted out as a studio.

141bid., pp. 14, 15.

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EMILE ZOLA AND FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM 57

CONCLUSION

Zola was inclined to rally to the cause of the underdog as he conclusively


demonstrated in his outspoken support of the Impressionists and later of
Dreyfus. However, his promotion of the former was not prompted solely,
or even primarily, by humanitarian considerations. In keeping with the
spirit of his generation, the author was fascinated by experimental science
which had enjoyed a quarter of a century of phenomenal success. So great
had been the achievements of science that its spokesmen, particularly those
who were not themselves savants, were promising that it would provide a
new religion, a new society, and a new art.
Zola applied the methods of science to literature and in so doing be-
came the founder of the Naturalistic novel. He saw Impressionism as an
attempt to apply similar procedures to representational art-in this case the
laws of the science of optics. Thus, to a considerable extent, he equated
Naturalism with Impressionism and saw embodied in them the principles
by which modem art could come into being.

WORKS CONSULTED

Bex, Maurice. Manet, Paris: Editions Pierre Tisne, 1948.


Cogniat, Raymond. Histoire de la Peinture FranQaise, 2 vols. Paris: Femand
Nathan, 1954.
Francastel, Pierre. Histoire de la Peinture Francaise, 2 vols. Paris: Elsevier, 1955.
Grant, Elliott M. Emile Zola, New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1966.
Hemmings, F. W. J. Emile Zola, 2nd ed. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1966.
Huyghe, Rene. L'Art et 'homme, 3 vols. Paris: Larousse, 1961.
Robb, David M. and J. J. Garrison. Art in the Western World, New York: Harper
& Row, 1963.
Zola, Emile. Salons, ed. F. W. J. Hemmings and R. J. Niess. Paris: Librairie
Minard, 1959.
Zola, Emile. The Masterpiece, trans. Thomas Walton. New York: The Macmillan
Company, n.d.

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