Nadar (1820-1910), Portrait of Emile Zola, XIXe

“A WORK OF ART IS A CORNER OF NATURE, SEEN THROUGH A TEMPERAMENT” 

BIOGRAPHY :
Émile Zola is a French writer and journalist born in Paris on April 02, 1840, and died in the same city on September 29, 1902.
After spending his childhood in Aix-en-Provence, he moved to Paris in 1858.
He took a job as a clerk at the Hachette editions in 1862, after failing his baccalaureate twice, then became head of advertising.
“Tales to Ninon” was his first book which he published in 1864 but the latter will not mark the spirits.
It will remain with Hachette editions until 1866.
That same year, he published his first chronicles in the press.
In 1876, he became leader of the naturalists, a literary and artistic movement which aimed to objectively reproduce reality.
He is one of the most popular French novelists; one of the most edited, translated and commented in the world. His novels have been adapted for film and television on numerous occasions, but his work and his life have also been the subject of numerous studies.
On the literary level, he is mainly known for his romantic fresco in twenty volumes where the French society of the Second Empire is depicted there through the story of a family "Les Rougon Macquart".
The last years of his life were marked by his involvement in the Dreyfus affair.
In 1898, he published the article entitled "J'accuse" in the daily newspaper Aurore.
The latter dragged him into a trial for defamation and forced him into exile in London in the same year.