19th-Century Balzac Meets 20th-Century Bellaart

Gerard Bellaart’s masterly washed-pen drawing of Honoré de Balzac testifies to his great admiration for one of France’s most prodigious writers. He is particularly fond of the 19th-century Balzac novel Illusions perdues, about a young poet living in Angoulême, a provincial town in “France profonde,” who is desperate to make a name for himself in Paris.

Gerard Bellaart in his studio. [JH, 2013]