This catalogue and its companion volume of essays are published in conjunction with the exhibition "The Private Collection of Edgar Degas," held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from October 1, 1997, to January 11, 1998.

When Édouard Manet’s early paintings were greeted with outrage and derision in the 1860s, Émile Zola sprang to his defense, initiating a friendship that would last until Manet’s death in 1881. Then a young journalist with an eye for controversial causes, Zola was also seeking to launch his own literary career, which would eventually secure for him the reputation as the greatest French novelist of the late nineteenth century. Zola quickly became Manet’s staunchest champion, defending the painter in a series of impassioned essays and polemics against the aesthetic tyranny of the Paris Salons and the philistinism of the general public. The first of these was an extended study of Manet that, when it appeared in 1867, staked the initial claim for the painter’s modernity; it has come to be regarded as one of the seminal writings on nineteenth-century art. Zola then wrote about his experience of posing for the portrait Manet painted of him. Finally, after the painter’s early death at the age of 51, Zola’s moving summation of his work and legacy appeared in the catalogue of the memorial exhibition. All are reproduced in this volume, along with an informative introduction by the Zola scholar Robert Lethbridge sketching in the broader cultural and political scene of late nineteenth-century France.

A print can sometimes tell us more than a painting about the history of art. Michel Melot illustrates his thesis in this book, analysing relationships between artists, the art market, the critics, collectors and political institutions. This fresh approach reveals Impressionism not as a sort of miracle, but as a response to economic and social upheaval. This original view of a key movement in the history of art allows the reader to understand its decisive effect on all the subsequent generations who have contributed to maintaining the tradition of the belle epreuve.

For many today, the art of the late nineteenth century is dominated by Impressionism and Post-impressionism. By explicating a range of highly engaging, often mysterious and beautiful prints, drawings and small sculptures, The Darker Side of Light evokes the shadowed interiors and private introspections that compose a far less familiar history of late nineteenth century art.