The Significance of the Portrait in The Picture of Dorian Gray

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The Significance of the Portrait in The Picture of Dorian Gray

The portrait in the book was originally painted by Basil Hallward who

believed it was the greatest thing he had ever done. Everyone admired

the painting and it wins him the respect of all his friends. Another

significance of the portrait to Basil Hallward is that it poignantly

turned out to be the cause of his own death when Dorian madly murders

him, as he was the man who painted the portrait that went so wrong.

"The mad passions of a wild animal stirred within him…" (Dorian Gray)

This shows how angry and disturbed Dorian had become. The portrait was

also a physical representation of Basil's fascination with Dorian and

how much he admired him that the painting he did was thought to be the

best he had ever done.

This leads to the significance of the portrait and Dorian. When Dorian

first met Lord Henry, he had no idea of how good-looking he was. Lord

Henry alerted him to the power of his appearance. This lead to Dorian

becoming narcissistic and obsessive, he looked upon the painting with

genuine fascination. Dorian believed that it too was the loveliest

portrait he had seen.

Wilde uses Dorian's obsession with the painting to implicitly condemn

aestheticism. However, this is contradicting what he said in his

preface and how he portrays Lord Henry, which is a representation of

himself. Lord Henry believes that art is completely distinct from

morality. Lord Henry like Wilde is an aesthete. So, when he says that

the way Dorian is obsessed with the painting, he is being hypocritical

as he to thinks that beauty is the ultimate pursuit in life. In the

preface of the book Wilde says that,

"Beautiful things mean only beauty."

Wilde is also ironic when he says that

"There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book."

He is being ironic because after the preface is a book, which is very

immoral as it is full of aesthetic beliefs.

Basil Hallward adheres to the conventional belief that looking at

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