Pablo Picasso: Honoré de Balzac

[Pablo Picasso](/artist/pablo-picasso) was so enamored by the works of the 19th-century writer and playwright Honoré de Balzac that the artist even believed himself to be haunted by Balzac’s ghost. Picasso’s fascination with the Frenchman bordered on obsession—when Picasso needed a new studio in 1937, he chose to move into a 17th-century townhouse at 7 Rue des Grands-Augustin in Paris, the very same flat where Balzac sets the opening scene to his macabre story, *The Hidden Masterpiece*. Throughout his career, Picasso paid homage to the writer—from cheeky illustrations for Balzac’s short story *Le Chef-d’œuvre Inconnu* to lithographs portraying Balzac in caricature. Knowing the artist’s soft spot for the writer, in 1954 the Paris-based printing workshop Verve commissioned the artist to illustrate Balzac’s masterwork, *La Comédie Humaine*. Picasso sketched dozens of playful vignettes of post-Napoleonic French life, which he also produced as color lithographs and black-and-white heliogravures.