16 h 23 minAudiobook11 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 16 h 23 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when a painter’s need to create leaves little room for the people who love him?
In nineteenth-century Paris, Claude Lantier wants to paint life as he sees it. Exhibition juries, public taste, and his own demanding eye stand in his way. A stormy night brings Christine to his door in search of shelter. Their awkward meeting grows into intimacy, but painting demands more and more of him.
In His Masterpiece, Émile Zola follows Claude among young artists and writers determined to break old rules. His novelist friend Pierre Sandoz shares his hunger to make something lasting. Yet ridicule meets Claude’s work, and a large canvas resists every effort to bring it into harmony. Love, friendship, and ordinary life come under strain.
What you’ll discover
- The weight of ambition Feel the strain as Claude’s demanding eye deepens his dissatisfaction and hunger for recognition.
- Love beside the canvas Meet Christine, whose hope for a shared life competes with Claude’s consuming attachment to painting.
- Friends hungry for change Enter a circle of artists and writers who want to sweep away the old rules.
- Success without certainty Meet Bongrand, an established painter who understands that recognition does not end an artist’s doubts.
- An ambition without rest Watch a single unfinished canvas gather hopes that no actual painting seems able to fulfil.
Who will love it
Readers who love stories of artists and friendship, vivid portraits of nineteenth-century Paris, and the clash between a creative calling and ordinary happiness, told with warmth, detail and a keen eye for people.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A stormy night begins everything
- Three friends who mean to conquer Paris
- Thursday dinners and a band of rebels
- Love grows slowly in a studio
- Bennecourt and a life apart from friends
- Back in Paris, the old circle has changed
- The great canvas that eats a life
- What the story says about art and friendship
- How Zola builds the book
Who’s who
- Claude LantierA fiercely devoted painter who dreams of capturing modern life in open air and light, and whose perfectionism keeps his greatest work out of reach.
- Christine HallegrainA young orphan from Clermont who falls in love with Claude, becomes his model and wife, and fights a painted rival for his heart.
- Pierre SandozClaude's loyal boyhood friend, a clerk turned novelist, who plans a vast series of books and keeps the Thursday dinners alive.
- Louis DubucheA baker's son who studies architecture, craves security and money, and marries into a wealthy building contractor's family.
- Henri FagerollesA clever young painter who borrows Claude's ideas, softens them for the public and climbs fast toward fame and fortune.
- BongrandA celebrated older painter of The Village Wedding, kind to the young, who dreads that his best work is behind him.
- MahoudeauA poor sculptor from Plassans who dreams of colossal statues while a gift for grace keeps showing through his clumsy fingers.
- JoryA boastful journalist who writes articles to launch his friends and soon serves only his own comfort and profit.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 16 h 23 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 11 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Das Meisterwerk in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Das Meisterwerk
by Émile Zola · 1886
A storm throws a stranded girl at a painter's door, and her face becomes the key to the picture he cannot finish.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
His Masterpiece is a novel by Émile Zola, one of the books in his long series about the people of the Second Empire. It follows a painter named Claude Lantier from his youth in Paris to the day his life reaches its end.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A stormy night begins everything
The novel opens at two in the morning in July, as a storm breaks over Paris. Claude, a bony and bearded young painter, runs home along the Seine and finds a young woman huddled against his door. She says she is Christine, newly arrived from Clermont, and that a train accident and a cheating cabdriver have left her lost. Claude distrusts women and believes none of it.
Still, he takes her in, because the rain is pouring and no cab can be found. He gives her his own bed behind a screen and sleeps on the couch. He changes the sheets first, with the neat skill of a bachelor, and she lies awake in the stifling heat under the roof.
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What is His Masterpiece about?
It follows the painter Claude Lantier, his love for Christine and his friendships with writers and artists in Paris. His obsession with one great picture of the city shapes, and finally threatens, everything he holds dear.
Is Claude Lantier based on a real painter?
Zola drew on the world of the young painters he knew, including friends from his own youth, and the story echoes real events such as the Salon of the Rejected. Claude himself is an invented character.
Who is Sandoz in the novel?
Sandoz is Claude's boyhood friend, a clerk who becomes a novelist. He plans a long series of books about one family, as Zola himself did, and he is the one friend who stays loyal to the end.
The author
Émile Zola
1840–1902 · French novelist
Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, and poet. He was born in Paris, grew up in Aix-en-Provence, and later lived in Paris and Médan. He wrote Thérèse Raquin (1867), Nana (1880), and Germinal (1885). His twenty-novel series, Les Rougon-Macquart, appeared between 1871 and 1893.
More by Émile Zola
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