The Artist's Obsession

Originally by Oscar Wilde

Reimagined from the vantage point of Basil Hallward

"He painted beauty. It destroyed him."

Basil Hallward paints the portrait that will damn Dorian Gray. But why? What drove a quiet, principled artist to create something so dangerously perfect? This reimagining explores the obsession that Wilde could only hint at in 1890.

Pages

290

Print Price

$24.99

Kindle Price

$9.99

Genre

Literary Fiction

Why This Vantage Point

Wilde's novel is a perennial bestseller. Basil's unspoken feelings for Dorian — which Wilde had to code due to Victorian censorship — can now be told openly. This transforms a horror novel into a devastating love story.

Read an Excerpt

The Original

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Reimagined — Basil Hallward's Voice

I have painted hundreds of faces. Duchesses, politicians, children with ringlets and dogs with better pedigrees than most of my patrons. None of them cost me anything. Then Dorian walked into my studio, and I understood for the first time what the old masters meant when they spoke of being 'seized' by a subject. I did not paint him. He painted himself through me — every brushstroke a confession I could not make in words, every shadow a feeling I could not name in polite company. When the portrait was finished, I looked at it and saw not Dorian but myself, laid bare.

Ready to hear the other side?

Get The Artist's Obsession in print or digital format.