description: 15 hrs. 35 min.Perhaps the most autobiographical of Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels, The Masterpiece is a hard, bleak, and raw portrait of unrecognized artistic genius. Claude Lantier, brother to Nana and son of Gervaise, is a struggling painter who dreams of conquering the Paris art scene with his revolutionary "open air" style of painting. Discouraged and mocked, Claude retreats to the countryside with a young woman from Clermont, with whom he has fallen in love, before returning to Paris, where he continues to experience rejection at every turn. Zola's depiction of a frustrated artist is said to have drawn heavily on the real-life experiences of Edouard Manet and Paul Cezanne, the latter of whom broke off his friendship with the author upon reading the novel.
language: English
title: His Masterpiece
titlecomplete: His Masterpiece (Les Rougon-Macquart, #14)
characters: Claude Lantier, Christine Hallegrain, Louis Dubuche, Pierre Sandoz
genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Roman, Literature, Classics, Novels, 19th Century, Art, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 4440
series: Les Rougon-Macquart
awards: awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Premi de Traducció Vidal Alcover
category: Margarida Casacuberta Rocarols
publisher: Indypublish.Com