Circa 1836

At the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours, you can see Balzac in a robe, but not just any dressing gown: his favorite, a sort of bure robe inspired by the habit of the Carthusian monks, and in which he is said to have written La Comédie Humaine. A famous robe, then, worn by Balzac in his portrait by Boulanger, circa 1836.

Using the painting as a starting point, Gaëlle Bourges conducted a sort of investigation into some of Balzac's works, including Eugénie Grandet, piling on historical facts, digressions and more or less haphazard superimpositions.