They Were Friends: Zola et Cézanne

Émile Zola and Paul Cézanne met at the Collège Bourbon in Paris in 1852 while both still young and years ahead of the separate fame they would each reach in separate fields of the arts.

Zola was a master of letters, distinguished gentleman of the school of naturalism, and liberal social activist. He had an substantial output during his lifetime, maybe most famously his letter that blew open the sordidness of the whole Dreyfus Affair, "J'accuse." Another distinguished man of letters, Gustave Flaubert, paid him a high compliment indeed when discussing Zola's Nana as "Nana tourne au mythe, sans cesser d'être réelle."*


Cézanne was a stalwart of the post-impressionistic school of painting, his mastery of colour and the brush forming a bridge between Impressionism and Cubism. Both Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso have been attributed stating he "is the father of us all."


*"Nana turns into myth, without ceasing to be real." Thought I'd be an ass, like when I read those essays and they quote some foreign text and proceed to offer zero translation like I'm automatically some prerequisite of world languages to be reading their lousy thesis.