Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu

The original volume was published in 1931 by Ambroise Vollard, the renowned Parisian publisher who had in 1926 enlisted Picasso to produce a series of etchings for this exclusive edition of Balzac’s novel, which also featured wood engravings by Georges Aubert after Picasso’s drawings. Vollard’s publication represents the definitive version of Balzac’s Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, first issued by the author in 1837. Considered Balzac’s personal declaration of aesthetic faith, the short story explores the common problem facing artists caught between the creative impulse and the pursuit of formal and technical perfection. The story concerns the decade-long quest of an old painter named Frenhofer, who struggles to complete his ultimate masterpiece, a painting of a young model that he titled La belle noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker). Despite his heroic efforts, Frenhofer is unable to attain absolute perfection and when he realizes that his artist friends see nothing in the painting, he burns his canvas and dies a madman.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Picasso was fascinated by Balzac’s story of creative passion and inner struggle, to the degree that he eventually moved into a Paris studio where, in Balzac’s novel, Frenhofer had met the young French artist Nicolas Poussin. Interestingly, Picasso’s etchings for the book, which were completed in 1927, do not illustrate Balzac’s story, but instead explore the deeper meanings he finds in the text, particularly the relationships of the artist with his model and spectator and spectacle, a recurrent theme in Picasso’s art.