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'''L'Œuvre''' (1886; "The Masterpiece") is a novel by Émile Zola, part of the twenty-volume series ''Les Rougon-Macquart''. It is a lightly fictionalized account of his childhood friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne, as the fictional painter "Claude Lantier" who fails in his life's work to create a work of art that would survive the ages. Despite great talent, Lantier is unable to create his masterpiece; Zola describes the failure as the result of Lantier's overambitious goal, as well as a hereditary "lesion of the eye" that plagues him. His desperate attempts to paint the perfect picture destroy both his family life and his friendship with other artists. Eventually, he hangs himself in front of his unfinished painting.

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Major themes

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Major themes

The book includes a few autobiographical details. The story of Claude is set in a world of artists and those who trade their pictures and in general shows the struggle for art's liberation. Zola, as a young journalist, wrote many articles on art and he was deeply interested in the newest ways of painting; he was one of the earliest champions of the work of Édouard Manet. The character of Pierre Sandoz, a young writer whose ambition is to write a story of a family that would portray the present epoch, is most clearly a self-portrait of the author. The basis of some of the other characters -- including the central figure, Claude Lantier -- is murkier. Though Lantier is most often understood as being based on Cézanne, the Impressionist painters Édouard Manet, and Claude Monet, are often cited as other possible sources, and in a letter written immediately after the novel's appearance in 1886, Claude Monet (who was acquainted with both Cézanne and Manet) indicated that he did not recognize himself or any of his fellow painters in the character. Despite this, the book is often blamed with ending the friendship between Cézanne and Zola; no correspondence exists between the two after a letter in which Cézanne thanks Zola for sending him the novel.

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★ (French)

★ (English)

★ Aruna D'Souza, "Paul Cézanne, Claude Lantier, and Artistic Impotence."  In ''Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide'', autumn 2004.