Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.
Le Père Goriot is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set in Paris in 1819, it follows the intertwined lives of three characters: the elderly doting Goriot, a mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin and a naive law student named Eugène de Rastignac.
Gerrit Dou, also known as GerardDouw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his trompe-l'œil "niche" paintings and candlelit night-scenes with strong chiaroscuro. He was a student of Rembrandt.
La Peau de chagrin, known in English as The Magic Skin and The Wild Ass's Skin, is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. La Peau de chagrin belongs to the Études philosophiques group of Balzac's sequence of novels, La Comédie humaine.
La Comédie humaine is Honoré de Balzac's 1829–48 multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration (1815–30) and the July Monarchy (1830–48).
Illusions perdues — in English, Lost Illusions — is a serial novel written by the French writer Honoré de Balzac between 1837 and 1843. It consists of three parts, starting in provincial France, thereafter moving to Paris, and finally returning to the provinces. The book resembles another of Balzac's greatest novels, La Rabouilleuse, that is set in Paris and in the provinces. It forms part of the Scènes de la vie de province in La Comédie humaine.
Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny was an Australian painter. Born and raised in Melbourne, Victoria, he achieved success and critical acclaim as an expatriate in fin-de-siècle Paris. He gained an honourable mention at the Paris Salon of 1890 with his painting Tritons and a bronze medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 with his Burial of St Catherine of Alexandria. The French state acquired 13 of his works for the Musée du Luxembourg and regional collections. He was a "sumptuous colourist and splendidly erudite painter of ideal themes, and the creator of the most ambitious Salon paintings produced by an Australian."
Pierre-Marie-Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette, better known simply as Charles de Bernard, was a French writer.
Louis Candide Boulanger was a French Romantic painter, pastellist, lithographer and a poet, known for his religious and allegorical subjects, portraits, genre scenes.
Louis Lambert is an 1832 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Études philosophiques section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set mostly in a school at Vendôme, it examines the life and theories of a boy genius fascinated by the Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).
Olympe Pélissier was a French artists' model and courtesan and the second wife of the Italian composer Gioachino Rossini. She sat for Vernet for his painting of Judith and Holofernes. Honoré de Balzac described her as "the most beautiful courtesan in Paris".
The Maison de Balzac is a writer's house museum in the former residence of French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). It is located in the 16th arrondissement at 47, rue Raynouard, Paris, France, and open daily except Mondays and holidays; admission to the house is free, but a fee is charged for its temporary exhibitions. The nearest métro and RER stations are Passy and Avenue du Président Kennedy.
La Maison du chat-qui-pelote is a novel by Honoré de Balzac. It is the opening work in the Scènes de la vie privée, which comprises the first volume of Balzac's La Comédie humaine.
La Bourse is a short story by the French novelist Honoré de Balzac. It was published in 1832 by Mame-Delaunay as one of the Scènes de la vie privée in La Comédie humaine. Later editions of the work were brought out by Béchet in 1835 and by Charpentier in 1839, in both of which La Bourse was placed among the Scènes de la vie parisienne. It was, however, restored to the Scènes de la vie privée when Furne brought out the fourth and final edition in 1842; this heavily revised version of the story appeared as the third work in Volume 1 of La Comédie humaine.
Reginald Gray was an Irish portrait artist. He studied at The National College of Art (1953) and then moved to London, becoming part of the School of London led by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach. In 1960, he painted a portrait of Bacon which is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. He subsequently painted portraits from life of writers, musicians and artists such as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Brendan Behan, Garech Browne, Derry O'Sullivan, Alfred Schnittke, Ted Hughes, Rupert Everett and Yves Saint Laurent. In 1993 Gray had a retrospective exhibition at UNESCO Paris and in 2006, his portrait "The White Blouse" won the Sandro Botticelli Prize in Florence, Italy.
Slave of Desire is a 1923 American silent drama film directed by George D. Baker, produced and distributed by Goldwyn Pictures. It was based on the novel La Peau de chagrin by Honoré de Balzac, first published in 1831. The Balzac novel had previously been filmed in 1909 as The Wild Ass's Skin, which was more faithful to the original novel.
The Quai Voltaire is a street and quay located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. 308 meters long, it lies between the Quai Malaquais and the Quai Anatole-France. The Quai Voltaire begins at the Rue des Saints-Pères and ends at the Rue de Bac and the Pont Royal.
Born in 1973, near Paris, France, multimedia artist Stéphane Blanquet is a prolific figure in the contemporary art scene since the end of the 1980s.
Charles-Gaston Levadé was a French composer.
François Simonau was a painter, born in what is now Belgium, who made his career in London. He was the teacher, and later stepfather, of Emma Soyer.
