HIS MASTERPIECE

BY

EMILE ZOLA


Edited, With a Preface, By
Ernest Alfred Vizetelly



PREFACE

'HIS MASTERPIECE,' which in the original French bears the title of
_L'Oeuvre_, is a strikingly accurate story of artistic life in Paris
during the latter years of the Second Empire. Amusing at times,
extremely pathetic and even painful at others, it not only contributes
a necessary element to the Rougon-Macquart series of novels--a series
illustrative of all phases of life in France within certain dates--but
it also represents a particular period of M. Zola's own career and
work. Some years, indeed, before the latter had made himself known at
all widely as a novelist, he had acquired among Parisian painters and
sculptors considerable notoriety as a revolutionary art critic, a
fervent champion of that 'Open-air' school which came into being
during the Second Empire, and which found its first real master in
Edouard Manet, whose then derided works are regarded, in these later
days, as masterpieces. Manet died before his genius was fully
recognised; still he lived long enough to reap some measure of
recognition and to see his influence triumph in more than one respect