Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Immoral Science In The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Suzanne Raitt

Arts & Sciences Book Chapters

Near the beginning of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the painter Basil Hallward explains to Lord Henry Wotton exactly what it is about Dorian Gray that inspired him to paint such an exquisitely beautiful portrait. Basil explains, “[Dorian] defines for me the lines of a fresh school” of art, and his “personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before.”1 In the course of the narrative, Hallward’s phrase “recreate …