Édouard Manet's Execution of the Emperor Maximilian…

Édouard Manet's Execution of the Emperor Maximilian (1867-68, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Mannheim, Germany) is exhibited successfully in the U.S. and he has a one-man exhibition of new pastels at the premises of La Vie Moderne.

He also exhibits Portrait of Antonin Proust (1880, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, USA) and At Pére Lathuille's at the Salon.

He spends the summer at Bellevue in treatment for his illness, but his leg condition worsens and his health deteriorates.

From 1878, the Zola home in Médan, on the Seine River not far from Paris, has served as a gathering spot for a group of the novelist's disciples, the best known of whom are Guy de Maupassant and Joris-Karl Huysmans, and together they publish a collection of short stories, Les Soirées de Médan (1880; Evenings at Médan).

As the founder and most celebrated member of the naturalist movement, Zola publishes several treatises to explain his theories on art, including Le Roman expérimental (1880; The Experimental Novel).

He also returns to the theme of upper class sexual decadence in 1880's Nana.

Paul Cézanne divides his time between Melun, Paris, and Médan, visiting Zola.

He begins to systematize his technique into patterns of parallel brushstrokes that give a new significance to the pictorial surface.

In 1879-80, Cézanne paints an unassuming series of still lifes and self-portraits, and these, when they become known, profoundly impress the younger generation, who reckon them to be as monumental as the great art of the past, yet in a subtly different way that is inherent in the actual manner of painting.