1882-07 · The Hague · Knot of Motif

The Zola Year in The Hague

Zola paints life as it is — without beautifying it. He would do the same.

F944 Sien with Cigar Sitting on the Floor near Stove 1882

Letter

July 1882, The Hague. He wrote: "I am now reading Zola's Le ventre de Paris — it is a magnificent book." Another letter: "Zola paints life as it is — without beautifying it." He placed Zola's method and his own painting method side by side: Zola writes workers, he paints workers; Zola does not beautify, neither does he. This was the first time he directly transplanted a literary methodology into a painting methodology.

Place

The Hague, a half-basement studio in a workers' district. Sien and her child lived here. Outside the window: the street, workers, vendors, old people. He went out each day to draw these people, came back to read Zola. Zola's novels held the same people — the market workers of Le ventre de Paris, the women of the lower depths in Nana. The books and the street outside the window were the same world in his mind.

Events

1882-07 The Ferocious Reader · Letter 241
Began reading Zola's Le ventre de Paris. 'It is a magnificent book.' Zola's world of workers began to overlap with the workers in front of him
1882-07 The Ferocious Reader · Letter 243
'Zola paints life as it is — without beautifying it.' The first time he directly transplanted a literary methodology into a painting methodology
1882-07 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 244
Reading Michelet's La femme and Zola's Nana simultaneously — two books about women, two completely different tones
1882-08 The Ferocious Reader · Letter 246
Continued with Zola's Une page d'amour. The entire Rougon-Macquart series began entering his reading map
1882-09 The Ferocious Reader · Letter 249
Compared Zola and Dickens side by side in a letter — 'Zola is the French Dickens, but cooler, more scientific.'