La Bourse - Balzac and Art

Balzac and Art

In La Bourse, Balzac deals with a range of themes which he was to explore in great detail throughout La Comédie humaine: the arts; creation in all its forms, as well as the joys and the pains which it causes. A great admirer of Eugène Delacroix, whom he was later to use as a model for the character of Joseph Bridau (a painter who appears in The Black Sheep, A Start in Life and La Bourse), he depicts the act of artistic creation from every angle: the innovative and misunderstood painter (the brilliant Frenhorfer in The Unknown Masterpiece); the novice painter who gains public recognition (Joseph Bridau); the wealthy man who dabbles in art (Pierre Grassou, who fritters away his talent making copies of the masters).

Balzac rarely misses an opportunity to illustrate his novels with references to famous paintings, and La Bourse is no different: " Adelaide came behind the old gentleman's armchair and leaned her elbows on the back, unconsciously imitating the attitude given to Dido's sister by Guérin in his famous picture."

Balzac also deals brilliantly with those disciplines of the arts which are dear to him and which distinguish La Comédie humaine, treating them with a meticulousness and a precision which still astonish experts today:

• Sculpture: Sarrasine whose eponymous hero is a rebel genius.
• Music: Gambara, in which is described a quasi-mathematical creation of a musical work of art, and in which Balzac also gives us a meticulous analysis of one of Giacomo Meyerbeer's operas.
• Lyrical art: Massimilla Doni, in which a love story serves as a pretext for a lecture on the art of Rossini.

Balzac is a great storyteller and creator of fables. La Bourse is a subtle fable in which an artist – one who, by definition, is skilled in the art of observation – must try and make sense of the conflicting signs he observes in Madame de Rouville's apartment, as though he is trying to decipher a work of art. Balzac also portrays in this short novel a social category to which he often returns in La Comédie humaine: the forgotten victims of Napoleon. Although regarded as a minor work, La Bourse illustrates the world of painting in a rather unexpected way. It also sheds light on other works on the same theme, and on Balzac's understanding of art. As such, it represents an important stone in the edifice of La Comédie humaine.