The Most Powerful Painting You Have Never Heard Of
Leon Frederic’s artwork reflects painful everyday reality.
“I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.” — Emile Zola
Emile Zola was a 19th-century French author, renowned for writing in a “naturalistic” style. His novels depicted the nitty-gritty details of everyday life, warts and all.
He rejected the Romantic themes of authors like Alexandre Dumas or Victor Hugo, and rather focused on the mundane parts of existence. No lofty ideas. No larger than life characters. No sublime beauty.
Instead, he described struggles. His works examined normal people facing existential problems. There was no sugar-coating. He wanted to portray reality as it really was.
Dark. Raw. Real.
Naturalists looked at how circumstances, emotions, and forces of nature shape human lives. For them, these outside constraints are what drives a person’s destiny.
“Man is not alone. He lives in society, in a social condition; and consequently, for us novelists, this social condition unceasingly modifies the phenomena. Indeed our great study is just there, in the reciprocal effect of society on the…
