“The fear of life, the fear of burdens and of duties, of annoyances and of catastrophes! The fear of life, which makes us, through dread of its sufferings, refuse its joys. Ah! I tell you, this cowardliness enrages me; I cannot forgive it. We must live - live a complete life - live all our life.” Emile Zola

How would you have your portrait painted?

How would you stand? Would you be at a desk? What would you be wearing? How would you position your head? And what position could you hold for hours? 

I asked my Brother Paul this past week on how he might want to be painted when we were in the New York Public Library staring at portraits of Old New York civic leaders (old white men) and he said to me, “it seems like you have thought about this quite a lot.” I have. We are surrounded by portraiture all the time when you think of it as I saw the throngs of visitors taking selfies. The “selfie” is the self-proclaimed portraiture of ourselves when we are working out, or eating lunch, or lounging on the couch. TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and all the channels of the internet have become the still lives of portraiture.

And yet, when I stand in front of Edouard Manet’s portrait of Emile Zola, writer, critic and friend, another wave of questions wash over me. Why did Manet make that choice? The decisions in the painting are dripping with intention and thought. The painting, now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is part of the traveling  Manet/ Degas exhibit coming from Paris, in partnership with the Musee D’Orsay. I saw the exhibit in Paris and I don’t remember seeing this portrait. I missed it while being overwhelmed with the immensity of my falling in love with Manet. I fell in love with his command of the brush, palette, and frankly, his human drama. Now after viewing the exhibit four times, this portrait stands out as one of my favorite pieces. Of the many questions, I am wondering what the rest of Manet’s studio (where it was painted) looks like as he is being sequestered to his own personal study. I am sure that is where he spent most of his time anyway or a cafe for that matter. Zola is portrayed sitting sideways with his head vertical and he is surrounded by books, his writings, collections, and a pamphlet on Manet is featured prominently. This is no ordinary portrait. The subject is not facing us directly. We barely can see him. And Manet injects himself into the portrait in various ways including painting a photograph of his masterpiece, “Ophelia” in  the upper right corner (with the cat barely making it into the canvas) with two other pieces, Velazquez's Bacchus, and a Japanese print of a wrestler by Utagawa Kuniaki II with the Peacock feathers tucked away behind the frame. The meta-ness of Manet painting a photograph of his painting is extremely pleasurable.

I don’t know why I’m obsessed with this portrait and almost don’t consider it a portrait because of Zola’s casual positioning. It might be the nested right angles as you can view if you stare the top right, then guide your eyes down to the framed art, then him sitting down, as I get lost in his jacket, and then the chair with the floral pattern. All right angles nested together like Russian dolls.

He has his quill waiting in the ink. He is almost frozen in thought for his next insight from his art book. He is a writer, and he’s dressed well. But the casual casualness is something captures my attention.  He’s a handsome man and it’s a handsome painting. We are close to Emile, but not really that close. Manet paints what he sees, but gives us little room to move around. The painting is even in tonality, not creating much depth. Zola could be seen as somewhat of a patron to Manet (due to his writing making him more well known) and was dear friends with Paul Cezanne, Zola was certainly part of the in crowd.

This is a portrait painting pushing the boundaries of a modern writer, a modern friend, and modern man. And this might be why I love it. It captures, in 1868, the cusp of modernity, right before everything speeds up. This painting slows change down in paint. It is a slow portrait of a contemporary man. And now we can only hope for a selfie with the right lightning? What will be the image of 2023 that can last for the next generation? I certainly will keep going back to this portrait to look for more easter eggs painted by Manet. I never tire of it because it included all the things that Zola loved in one space captured for eternity. The portrait is not just of Zola’s face, but of the text he wrote, images he and Manet loved, perspectives he challenged, and of the very idea of Paris at that time. And for Manet to capture all of these ideas in one painting makes the painting an idea in itself to be reckoned with and beckons a viewer to give it their consideration. Manet/Degas on view through January 7, 2024 at The Met.

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