Size of sheet: 33 x 25 cm. Size of plate: 23.6 x 18 cm. Émile Zola was a French writer. The most important Naturalist writer of his time, he, amongst many other novels, wrote La Bête humane (1890) and was a major advocate of the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus, encapsulated through his newspaper headline J'accuse. He was famously painted by Edouard Manet and was nominated for the first two Nobel Prizes in literature in 1901 and 1902.