Pickman's Model

The most terrifying art is not invented; it is observed.

Pickman's Model is a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, written in September 1926 and first published in the October 1927 issue of Weird Tales. The narrative centers on Richard Upton Pickman, a Bostonian painter whose horrifically graphic works led to his expulsion from the Boston Art Club and ostracism from the local artistic community. The story is told by a middle-aged friend who recounts how he toured Pickman's hidden gallery in a rundown slum. As they moved deeper into the studio, the paintings grew increasingly evil, culminating in a massive canvas depicting a red-eyed, canine humanoid devouring a human victim.

When shots rang out and Pickman claimed to have killed rats, the narrator discovered a rolled photograph tucked behind the final painting. Unfurled, it revealed that the monstrous subject was not imaginary but real, proving Pickman drew inspiration from living monsters rather than a diseased imagination.

Quick Facts

Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre: Horror short story
Published in: Weird Tales
Format: Print (magazine)
Published: October 1927

Lore & Background

Richard Upton Pickman is depicted as a renowned Boston painter with a lineage tied to the Salem witch trials; his great-great-great-great-grandmother was hanged by Cotton Mather in 1692. The names 'Pickman' and 'Upton' are actual old Salem names. In 1926, Pickman vanished from his home, a date corroborated by Lovecraft's History of the Necronomicon. While he reappears as a ghoul in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926), aiding Randolph Carter, scholar Robert M. Price notes that this portrayal bears little relationship to the character in 'Pickman's Model,' suggesting the Dream-Quest version may be influenced by Tars Tarkas from A Princess of Mars. The story establishes that ghouls are real entities that exist alongside humans, capable of blending into society until their true nature is revealed through art or action.

Reader's Guide

The narrative structure is unusual for Lovecraft, utilizing a first-person monologue directed at a fictive listener named Eliot. Thurber implies Eliot's questions and interjections through his own dialogue, creating a casual, colloquial tone distinct from Lovecraft's typical style. The story takes place in the narrator's Boston drawing room in the evening after arriving by taxi. Key thematic elements include the 'physiology of fear' and how only a real artist understands the anatomy of terror, echoing Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature (1925–1927).

Thurber describes Pickman as a 'thorough, painstaking, and almost scientific realist.' The story compares Pickman's work to that of Henry Fuseli, Gustave Doré, Sidney Sime, Anthony Angarola, Francisco Goya, and Clark Ashton Smith. A specific motif involves emptying all six bullets from a revolver, which also appears in Herbert West–Reanimator and The Thing on the Doorstep.

Did You Know?

The narrator, Thurber, is a World War I veteran who describes himself as 'fairly hard-boiled' and mentions seeing action in France.
Lovecraft wrote that when he visited the North End with Donald Wandrei, they found the actual alley and house of the tale had been utterly demolished.
In the 2022 adaptation by Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, Thurber is played by Ben Barnes and Pickman by Crispin Glover.