Picturing walls

Abstract

Abstract Émile Zola’s literary oeuvre continues to provide scholars with one of the most comprehensive accounts of nineteenth-century art and culture. Yet the magnitude of this material has resulted in the works of art acquired by Zola over the course of his lifetime being largely overlooked. By focusing on how this ad hoc collection of more than fifty contemporary works was gathered and subsequently dispersed, this article elucidates the influence of close friendships and professional reciprocity on the reputation of artist and critic alike. It offers an unprecedented corrective to the pioneering article by Jean Adhémar (1960) which partly reproduced the procès-verbal from the posthumous auction of Zola’s estate held in 1903. Using the original version of this document, together with available sales catalogues, letters and Zola’s art writing, it provides the most comprehensive inventory of the works owned by Zola and how they relate to his life and work.