Detail of the Portrait of Emile Zola by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: Émile Zola

Artist: Edouard Manet

Date: 1868

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 57 1/2 × 44 7/8 in. (146 × 114 cm)

Framed: 66 1/4 × 53 3/8 × 4 15/16 in. (168.2 × 135.6 × 12.5 cm)

Credit Line: Musée d'Orsay, Paris (RF 2205)

Object No.: MD.076

Manet painted this portrait of the writer and critic Émile Zola in recognition of his recent support for the artist in the press. He is surrounded by attributes of his occupation, such as books, a quill pen, inkwell, and his 1867 article praising Manet, which appears as a blue pamphlet propped on his desk. The framed collage of prints on the wall echoes a device that Degas used in his Collector of Prints two years prior. Here, Manet included a photograph of his own work, Olympia—a “masterpiece” worthy of the Louvre, according to Zola—as well as a Japanese woodcut by Utagawa Kuniaki and a print after Diego Velázquez, both of which point to his artistic influences.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/manet-degas/exhibition-objects