Nine Letters from Émile Zola to Frans Netscher

Few periods have been more important in the history of Dutch art and letters than the decade between 1880 and 1890. Those years saw the rise of the painters of the “Hague school”—Josef Israëls, Blommers, the Maris brothers—and a reorientation of Dutch art toward the realism of the masters of the seventeenth century. A literary renaissance of some importance accompanied this artistic revolution. Dutch authors turned more and more from the insipid idealism of earlier days toward a new realism, strongly reminiscent of that prevailing in France. Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, the Goncourt brothers, Zola—these were the idols of the new school. The naturalistic doctrines of Zola carried an especial appeal to the young critics and novelists, and a small but vocal group of imitators carried his banner in Holland during the years 1880–90.