Lot 77: Jules Alexis Muenier (French, 1863-1942), Paul Avril (French, 1843 - 1928); Maurice-Henri Orange (French, 1868-1916); Edmond Picard, (French, 1861 - 1899); Adrien Moreau (French, 1843-1906); Georges-Jules-Auguste Cain (French, 1856 - 1919); Gustave

Illustrations to Balzac's La Comédie humaine (115)
all signed and variously inscribed with quotations
oil on panel (6); the remaining 109 are a combination of pencil, grey wash, watercolor, and charcoal with some heightened with white on paperboard
Various sizes

There are 115 paintings, watercolors and drawings included in this lot.

Jules-Alexis Munier (1)
Paul Avril (6)
Maurice-Henry Orange (5)
Edmond Picard (1)
Adrien Moreau (10)
Georges-Jules-Auguste Cain (22)
Gustave Bourgain (7)
Maximilienne Guyon (9)
Albert Auguste Fourié (8)
Jules Girardet (10)
Alcidé –Théophile Robaudi (5)
Lucius Rossi (5)
Pierre Vidal (3)
Jacques-Clément Wagrez (3)
Henri-Alphonse-Louis Laurent-Desrousseaux (6)
Ernest Ange Duez (1)
Georges Roux (5)
Possibly St. Richou (8)


The bulk of Balzac's writing is contained in a group of ninety-five finished works and forty-eight unfinished works collectively known as La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy), the title of which references Dante's Divine Comedy. The works can be subdivided into a smaller group of novels: "Scenes of Private Life", "Scenes of Political Life", Parisian Life", "Provincial Life", "Country Life", "Military Life" and so on.

The various narratives take place during the Bourbon Restoration (1814-1830) and the following July Monarchy. While there are hundreds of characters in La Comédie humaine, a number of them travel from one story to another. This allowed Balzac to fully explore their psychological development, creating a remarkable dimensionality to his stories of a type not before attempted. The character that best represents Balzac's project is Eugene de Rastignac, an ambitious but poor nobleman who appears in over fifteen stories. Jealous of high society yet naïve of the price of reaching its echelons, Eugene will do anything to improve his social standing. Rastignac and all of Balzac's characters, from the lowest urchin to the wealthiest aristocrat are unified by their often single-minded quest to appease base urges and often selfish needs despite the cost to themselves and to those around them.

Given the dramatic and complex nature of Balzac's stories, it is little surprise that an ensemble of celebrated and emerging names of late 19th Century art would be chosen to illustrate an expansive edition of Katherine Prescott Wormeley's translation of La Comédie humaine, published in the United States in several editions by Boston publishers Roberts Brothers and Little, Brown though the late 1890s (an 1899 edition honored the centenary of Balzac's birth). Such projects were common in publishing in the 19th Century, but the Wormeley edition is notable for its roster of artists who illustrated each volume's frontispieces and particularly intriguing moments in each story. The annotations on the drawings are in French; so it is likely that a French agent first commissioned the project prior to the drawings' engraving and subsequent printing in the English translation.

The range of styles, compositional technique and pictorial choices in this group of illustrations easily conveys the editions appeal to American audiences eager for beautifully bound, fully-illustrated editions of great literature. The American reader would probably not have recognized each artist's name; indeed the set might only have served as expensive library decoration for most buyers. Perhaps more important than a good read was the opportunity to own a luxuriously appointed edition of La Comédie humaine. Collectors showed they were à la mode; part of the vogue for anything French that swept the East Coast of America in the late 19th Century.