The rural world

The Earth by Émile Zola.
CHERET Jules (1836 - 1932)
Joudrain et Cie fertilizers
ALESI D 'Hugo (1849 - 1906)

To close

Title: The Earth by Émile Zola.

Author : CHERET Jules (1836 - 1932)

Creation date : 1889

Date shown:

Dimensions: Height 247 - Width 88

Technique and other indications: Color lithograph on paper

Storage location: Website advertising museum

Picture reference: Inv 12888

To close

Title: Joudrain et Cie fertilizers

Author : ALESI D 'Hugo (1849 - 1906)

Creation date : 1895

Date shown:

Dimensions: Height 105 - Width 72.5

Technique and other indications: Color lithograph on paper

Storage location: Website advertising museum

Picture reference: Inv 999.291

Publication date: April 2005

Video

The rural world

Video

Historical context

While the Second Empire was synonymous with prosperity for French agriculture, the years 1875 to 1890 were those of recession. A general trend of falling prices began (32 to 39% between 1871 and 1896), in a climate of development of international trade favored by improved means of transport. Cereals are the most heavily affected, particularly wheat, which then reached its lowest prices (24.31 F / hl in 1874 against 16.80 F / hl in 1885).

Image Analysis

It was in 1887 that Émile Zola published the fifteenth volume of the Rougon Macquart cycle, La Terre. Eager to show the contemporary crisis of agriculture - obvious voluntary anachronism since his epic retraces "the natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire" -, the writer wishes "to do for the peasant with The Earth this [ that he did] for the worker with Germinal ”.

In 1889, Jules Chéret, leader of advertising "posterism" in vogue in France during the Belle Epoque, signed the cover of the illustrated edition. Drawing on the opening lines of the novel, he faithfully describes its opening scene. The hero, Jean Macquart, “a blue canvas planter tied on his stomach”, contemplates “with a breath for a minute” the surrounding countryside, “lost on the threshold of Beauce” Exhausted, the man is thin under his worn clothes; fatigue and weariness can be read on his emaciated face, as they seem to weigh on the shoulders of the carter who plows in the distance. At his feet lie ancient tools: scythe, sickle, harrow, instruments of his slavery, evoking, as G. Robert writes, "the tragic fatality nailing the peasant to the ground, to which he owes even his form. of soul ”. The palette of cold colors is added to the sharp line characteristic of the designer, to make the harshness of the work more noticeable. Conversely, wheat gold floods the advertising poster produced in 1895 by Hugo d'Alesi for Joudrain fertilizers.

The image is a promise of prosperous agriculture, where scientific progress is at the service of ancestral work - note the confrontation between fertilizer, a modern artifice, and the eternal gesture of the reaper. Akin to the imagery created by Millet forty years earlier, the designer glorifies the peasant, whose task is enhanced by the nobility and abundance of crops, wheat and vines, which will make his fortune. Reality on the one hand, virtuality on the other, the illustration of Chéret and the poster of Alesi respond to each other as an acknowledgment of failure and its miraculous solution.

Interpretation

At the heart of the agricultural crisis affecting the whole of France, the Beauce region, also known as the "wheat country" because of its cereal specialization, was more sensitive to market fluctuations. Beauceron agriculture was forced to react to competition from wheat imported from North America. In addition to the protectionism measures put in place by the Méline government, the response to the crisis involves an extension of cultivated areas and an improvement in techniques which will lead to more intensive agriculture. Thus we set up a diversification of crops, where the decline in the cultivation of cereals and fallow land allows the progress of industrial crops. The use of chemical fertilizers, which until then had been exceptional, is increasing, as is the selection of seeds. Finally, agricultural tools are developing with the mechanization of work related to harvesting (reapers, threshing machines) and land preparation (mechanical seed drill, brabant).

Zola (Emile)
innovation
naturalism
peasants
agricultural work
Third Republic
rural life
campaign

Bibliography

Georges DUBY and Armand WALLON (dir.)History of rural France, heyday and crisis of peasant civilization from 1789 to 1914volume III, Paris, Seuil, 1976, reed. "Points Histoire", 1992. Jean-Claude FARCYThe Beauceron peasants in the 19th centuryChartres, Archaeological Society of Eure-et-Loir, 1989. Émile ZOLAThe Rougon-MacquartParis, Gallimard, 1966, complete edition published under the direction of Armand Lanoux, studies, notes and variants prepared by Henri Mitterand.

To cite this article

Emmanuelle GAILLARD, "The rural world"