Émile Zola

Émile Zola was the leading figure of French literary Naturalism, best known for his twenty-novel Les Rougon-Macquart cycle dissecting society under the Second Empire. Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), the eleventh novel, follows the rise of a Paris department store and its ambitious owner Octave Mouret, whose appetite for risk voices the “die of passion” credo. Van Gogh, an avid reader of Zola, absorbed and quoted him admiringly — which is how this line drifted onto the painter.