Opposing Frames: Zola and Fromentin

ABSTRACT Grounded in Zola’s art criticism, this article analyses for the first time his writing on Fromentin over the decade 1866–76. It explores the diverse reasons for a hostility that is inseparable from a wider frame of reference in which Orientalism is perceived as emblematic of a Romantic aesthetic opposed by Zola. Paradoxically, however, Zola’s engagement with Fromentin’s Les Maîtres d’autrefois, opposed to modernist innovation, coincides with his own increasing disenchantment with Impressionism. His simultaneous re-evaluation of the Old Masters allows us to discern shared pictorial priorities which bring Zola and Fromentin into the same critical frame.