Characters & Colours: Not Just Art For Art’s Sake, Dorian Gray Teaches Us Morality

As the world celebrates International Artists Day today (Oct 25), I am reminiscing about the connection between art and literature. There are so many literary books and characters that have inspired artists and their creations – Sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851) inspired by William Shakespeare’s character in Hamlet, Salvador Dali’s Mad Tea Party (1969) inspired by Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland, John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shallot (1888) inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem by the same name published in 1832, Elida Tessler’s Dubling (2010) from James Joyce’s Ulysses and Pablo Picasso’s Don Quixote (1955) from the book with the similar title.

Art has also inspired writers. They have created characters and stories from paintings. Paintings have been hugely influential in creating literature like Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999), Hariet Scott Chessman’s Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper (2001) , Susan Vreeland’s The Girl in Hyacinth Blue (2000), Jeanne Lakogridis’ I, Mona Lisa (2006), Kathryn Wagner’s Dancing for Degas (2010) , Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003), Hollis Hodges’ Norman Rockwell’s Greatest Painting: a Novel (1988) , Sheramy D. Bundrick’s Sunflowers: A Novel of Vincent van Gogh (2009) and Thomas Swan’s The Cezanne Chase (1997).

Besides art inspiring literature and vice-versa, many writers have also created fictional artists, perhaps to show their interest in art or in their voyeuristic pleasure in living the life of an artist. Characters like Klara Sax, Peterson, Elaine Risley, Frenhofer, Hurtle Duffield, Gulley Jimson, Austin Fraser, Tom Birkin among others. The fictional artist that I found fascinating is Basil Hallward from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Even more intriguing is the subject of his art: Dorian Gray. The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in Lippincott’s Magazine in 1890 and was published in a book form a year later. There are speculations that it has similarities with the personal life of Wilde.

Dorian Gray is described as “this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves.” There was an unspeakable and mysterious attraction of the artist, Basil Hallward, to the subject of his art: Dorian Gray. His “personality had so strangely stirred him” that soon Basil felt the compelling need to paint Dorian’s portrait. He explains this relationship with Dorian to his friend Henry: “He is all my art to me now…there are only two eras of any importance in the world’s history. The first is the appearance of a new medium of art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will someday be to me.”

After completing the portrait of Dorian Gray, Basil was congratulated by Henry who called it “the finest portrait of modern times”. Dorian’s “sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before.” But, suddenly, he grew jealous of his own portrait when he thought he will grow old but the portrait will remain young forever. He remarked: “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June…If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that – for that- I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!” Surprisingly, Dorian’s wish comes true. His portrait ages, while he does not.

The portrait, however, became the ‘conscience keeper’ of Dorian. Every time he committed a sin, it would alter: “a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness”. The first time he had done something wrong (his treatment of Sibyl Vane) he was unable to accept the changes he saw in the portrait: “Has the portrait really changed? Or had it been simply his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where there had been a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing was absurd.”

What makes the character of Dorian intriguing is we can never actually be sure if his actions were primarily influenced by the words of Henry or his own instinct. At first, Dorian seems to be completely swept away by Henry’s ideas on youth, beauty, passion, temptation, women, actors, fidelity and sin. Henry tells Dorian: “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” Later, he feels it is Henry who is corrupting his mind. He decides: “He would not see Lord Henry any more – would not, at any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil’s garden had first stirred within him the passion for impossible things.” But was Henry simply telling Dorian what he wanted to hear? Basil did not get wayward listening to Henry but Dorian did. Was Dorian that vulnerable or was he using the pretext of Henry to get past all his sins?

Dorian commits sin after sin including the murder of the artist Basil Hallward. The same beautiful personality that held Basil in awe finishes him. His portrait becomes “loathsome”. Unable to bear its sight any longer and wishing for a ‘new life’, he stabs the portrait. His action suddenly brings him to his real old age and kills him reviving the portrait to its full glory showcasing his original youth and beauty. Perhaps, Wilde shows the futility of the vanity of youth and beauty in the novel through his magnificent character – Dorian Gray. As Wilde, in a letter to the St. James’s Gazette, summed up Dorian Gray “is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment.”