Pickman's Model

by H.P. Lovecraft

"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 story revolves around a Bostonian painter named Richard Upton Pickman who creates horrifying images. His works are brilliantly executed, but so graphic that they result in his membership in the Boston Art Club being revoked and himself shunned by his fellow artists.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Lovecraftian, Classics, Fantasy, Audiobook

66 pages, ebook

First published October 1, 1927

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cthulu and Woody Allen walk through New York’s Central Park and discuss H.P. Lovecraft’s novella Pickman’s Model.

Woody: I mean, it’s art, it’s about an artist and his inspirations and what he sees and observed, so what if it’s ghoulish and murky.

Cthulhu: But don’t you think the subject matter is too dark?

Woody: What are you kidding me, dark? It’s H.P. Lovecraft, readers know what’s coming, it’s like ordering Thai take out, and you know it’s spicy, right?

Cthulhu: Sure, they know it’s Lovecraft, but I mean an artist who produces occultist art can be a little, shall we say disconcerting for most viewers. I mean, death and destruction, it’s a lot for a person of today’s reading tastes.

Woody: I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.

Cthulhu: But don’t you think that Pickman’s Model, with a subject artist who paints pictures of ghoulish, otherworldly subjects is too much?

Woody: Too much? My therapist bill is too much, we’re talking about a short story here, a short story that a reader is going to be ready for. OK, when someone picks up a Lovecraft story, don’t you think they know what they’re getting into, I mean, no disrespect, but look at you, Great Cthulhu, with the tentacles and the flowing robes, you’re, I mean, you know, you’re very majestic, in a dark and creepy sort of way. No offense.

Cthulhu: None taken.

Woody: But don’t you think there was an absence of sex in Pickman’s Model? I mean, it was about an artist’s model and when I think of an artist’s model, I think of sex.

Cthulhu: Sex in Pickman’s Model? Woody, are you insane? His model was some kind of demon. That’s, I don’t know, that’s perverse, don’t you think?

Woody: Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right.

Cthulhu: That’s funny, but don’t you think that in Pickman’s Model, you had more going on than dirty, perverse sex? I mean, there is an artist who is mesmerized by devilish images.

Woody: Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.

Cthulhu: Ok, but what do you think was Lovecraft’s central theme in Pickman’s Model? And you can’t tell me it was sex. Was he trying to talk about the meaning of life and how dark it can be, outside of conventional mores and cultural norms?

Woody: I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.

Cthulhu: But that’s terrible! Don’t you think that Lovecraft was on to more than that, was he considering the immortal? I mean, isn’t that a part of art, to create and thus become the immortal?

Woody: I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

Cthulhu: Well, OK, I see your point, but I just feel that Lovecraft, especially in Pickman’s Model was searching for more than just a cheap, pulp thrill, I think he was suggesting more. Maybe he was onto some great philosophy, that art imitates life or that life suggests death, something more.

Woody: I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The madness and monstrosity lay in the figures in the foreground—for Pickman’s morbid art was preëminently one of daemoniac portraiture. These figures were seldom completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degree. Most of the bodies, while roughly bipedal, had a forward slumping, and a vaguely canine cast. The texture of the majority was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness. Ugh!"

As authors like Honoré de Balzac and Guy du Maupassant knew very well, a frame story, that is, a story within a story, can be an extraordinarily effective literary technique to heighten the drama and suspense of an otherwise memorable tale.

We encounter such a frame story in H.P. Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model, a harrowing yarn about an artist and his diabolical art. Written in 1926, the tale’s narrator, Thurber, a Bostonian gentleman and art connoisseur, speaks of the paintings and drawings of artist Pickman in ways that anticipate how many modern artists employ graphics and digital technology to create their own dark worlds of horror and terror.

We join Thurber and his chum Elliot as the two men share an intimate evening over drinks and coffee. Both men have a keen interest in art and thereupon Thurber relates his last strange meeting with artist Pickman.

Right from the outset there’s a strong sense of foreboding and unease when Thurber tells how, after encountering the paintings and sketches and other mysterious events in Pickman’s hidden cellar studio, he’s lucky to be sane at all. Not only that, after such a traumatic, gut-wrenching, agonizing episode, Thurber neither knows nor cares what ever happened to his onetime friend, an inspired artist to be sure, but a creature he knows not be he human or non-human.

It all begins the night Pickman invites Thurber the gentleman art lover to his special studio in the slums of Boston’s North End, a locale, he confides, not without its dark, disturbing histories, dwellings and streets soaked in the macabre and past horrors, miles away from well-to-do neighborhoods, much better suited for the more recent style of ingenious work he has been moved to fashion. Ah, the importance location and atmosphere have for an artist’s studio - we hear echoes of the magic contained in certain Paris garrets and flats as detailed in Honoré de Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece.

Then, with a voice rattling with anxiety, Thurber alludes to how Pickman shared a sampling of his latest art and aesthetic theories along with speculations of a decidedly philosophical nature, such concepts and formulae “wild enough to qualify him for the Danvers asylum.” Cause for any levelheaded art lover to panic – not only is he in the company of a superb painter but an artist who in all likelihood happens to be a madman.

H.P. Lovecraft draws on the longstanding tradition of romanticism - genuine artistic creation inextricably linked to madness, far distant from even the vaguest sniff of a conventional or humdrum mindset. And, as fans of the author have come to appreciate, Lovecraft takes such madness to the furthest extremes of terror.

To underline Thurber’s shock and alarm, his disgust and repugnance, when he finally takes a gander at Pickman’s new art, we come upon this revealing line: “Gad, I wouldn’t be alive if I’d ever seen what that man—if he was a man—saw!”

One of the things I love about this Lovecraft story is the fact that it is just that, a story – the manner in which the drawings and paintings are described leaves much room for a reader’s imagination; we can fill all the artist’s canvases and papers with creatures of our own devising – for myself, I envisioned hordes of diabolical, ghastly creatures crawling out of Hieronymus Bosch hell realms to fill modernistic science fiction landscapes. Thus, I can appreciate Thurber's widemouthed reaction in the above illustration.

“That nauseous wizard had waked the fires of hell in pigment, and his brush had been a nightmare-spawning wand.” Tell it like it is, Thurber! Is it any wonder at this point our narrator asks Eliot to pass the decanter so he can take another swig of liquor. With Pickman the artist and Pickman the man (or non-human, perhaps), we are as far removed from a Sunday painter as possible. I’m with Pickman and Thurber – such art will not be exhibited on the wall of a respectable art gallery hosting a lady's tea.

But in any case, we have seen in our mind’s eye the work of an artist who defies all boundaries of sanity, an artist who can inspire us to expand our vision in unique ways so we are better postured to fuse our imagination with not only his art but also the wider spectrum of H.P. Lovecraft's literary artistry. Hold on there, Mr. Reviewer! Is it possible for a fictional character to so empower an author's audience? I myself see no reason why not.

Can it get darker and deadlier? Yes, it most certainly can, since, after all, this is H.P. Lovecraft. Finally, Thurber comes upon a depiction of this unforgettable creature: “It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel.”

How could an artist’s mind travel down into horrifyingly ghoulish, morbid psychic tunnels? What does it take for a creator to trek through unspeakable, insane territories such that he can string together concatenations of vision and imagination that breathe life into such a creature? To find out where all this hair-raising art leads, take a deep breath and read the story for yourself.

Link to the complete story, Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/t...


"Well, I should say that the really weird artist has a kind of vision which makes models, or summons up what amounts to actual scenes from the spectral world he lives in."
- H.P. Lovecraft, Pickman's Model

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short story, narrated by main character Thurber, who tells his friend Eliot why he dropped an artist he admired named Pickman. It seems Pickman fell out of favor with society after he created some extremely gruesome paintings. But Thurber still remained fascinated, until the day Pickman took him to his “secret place” where he has been working on his latest paintings…

A really creepy, atmospheric, and riveting tale.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion this is one of Lovecraft's creepiest stories. Thurber talks about Pickman, an exceptional artist of nightmarish works in the style of Goya or Fuseli ('Ghouls Feeding' is one of Pickman's latest works). Pickman invited him to his studios and show him incredible works in the cellar where tunnels lead to cemeteries, hills and to the sea. Pickman also has family ties to a witch who was hanged generation ago on Gallows Hill in Salem. Now Pickman is missing. What was exactly depicted on his paintings and what made them look so real? Here you really walk into a disturbing world full of monsters and uncanny pictures. Here you get shivers down your spine. This is the eerie stuff. Absolutely recommended!

[Steven Serpens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Upton Pickman, talentosísimo pintor que carga con una peculiar fama entre su círculo artístico; pues, tal notoriedad se debe a la gran aversión que sus obras suelen causar, ya que estas son conocidas por ser una oda a lo mórbido, a lo inhumano y a lo grotesco.
Pero, gracias a Thurber, quien es el narrador de este título y la última persona en tener contacto con Pickman tras su desaparición, podremos conocer más detalles y pistas sobre este artista de lo repulsivo, para así comenzar a desentrañar, teorizar y vislumbrar cuáles pueden ser los misterios que ocultan sus lienzos, en conjunto con su posterior e hipotético destino.

Primero que todo, debo mencionar que no leía a Lovecraft desde hace un par de años, y sigue tal cual como lo recordaba. Antes de comenzar a leer esto, pensaba que El retrato oval podía haber sido una inspiración para este relato (no es algo que descarte del todo), ya que me esperaba una similitud considerable entre ambos títulos, pero no es el caso. Ambas son historias con planteamientos muy diferentes, que solo coinciden en la presencia de un pintor. Aunque, eso sí, es innegable la influencia de Poe como autor en Lovecraft y eso es algo que se puede apreciar en esta obra; pero, esta vez eso se demuestra sin caer en la densidad, el avasallamiento, el barroquismo y el embellecimiento de las palabras que suelen caracterizar sobremanera a ese otro maestro que le heredó tales cualidades al presente autor. Se nota el aire similar y para bien, no obstante, me adelanté, ya que me puse a hablar sobre Poe antes de tiempo…
En esta oportunidad se nos presenta una historia bastante atrapante e interesante, y en cierto grado, también se torna ambiental y algo sugestiva. Si bien es una lectura que fluye ágilmente, el cómo se desarrolla El modelo de Pickman y su narrativa son bastante simples: una conversación en la que Thurber narra su experiencia con el desaparecido Pickman, ya que él estuvo en su principal estudio y conoció algunas de sus obras inéditas. Eso es todo. Un concepto bastante sencillo y sin más, pero efectivo y cumplidor.

Por otra parte, quiero destacar al autor, ya que cumple con todos los requisitos para ser catalogado de basado, al dar un mensaje que encaja perfecto para lo que representa la generación de cristal, o por lo menos, que pueda ser aplicable para nuestros tiempos: «Hoy, en cambio, las mentes se han aguado tanto que incluso un club de pretendidos artistas se asusta y conmociona si un cuadro traspone los sentimientos que pudo experimentar un feriante de la calle Beacon en la mesa de té». Así que, lo único que puedo decir al respecto, es que este es un mensaje totalmente sublime y certero, con casi un siglo de anticipación, dirigido a los mazapanes de Twitter que hoy en día lloriquean por todo.
A esto también se le puede agregar su ya conocido racismo, que en esta oportunidad se refleja en indicar que: «los morenos no saben nada». Yo en lo personal, no tengo absolutamente ningún problema con esto, además de que separo la obra de su autor con total normalidad, y aunque no lo hiciera, me importaría un comino esta clase de cuestiones, porque no me preocupo de estupideces; pero sé que muchos no pueden hacer esto, cosa que los hace ofenderse por culpa del gran Lovecraft, y eso es algo que me parece ¡fascinante! 👌🏻

Ya enfocándonos en la trama, siento que estamos ante una historia algo licantrópica. No cabe duda de que estos seres con características humanoides y cánidas representan algo similar o relacionado. En parte, y según lo narrado por Thurber, sabemos que hacen trueques de bebés. Bueno, Pickman es resultado de eso, o por lo menos todo parece indicar que sí, ya que hay varias pistas al respecto. Por ejemplo: «Esas obras de Pickman mostraban qué les ocurre a esos niños robados, cómo se desarrollan hacia la deformidad. Comencé a advertir, en ese momento, una horrible similitud entre los rostros de las figuras humanas y las no humanas. [...] ¡Los seres humanos eran el origen de esos monstruosos seres caninos!». En base a estos comentarios, es evidente notar todo lo que indiqué, además de que el pintor sabía más de lo que debiera sobre tal grupo de bestias.
Asimismo, en otra oportunidad, él mismo se retrató representando su lado bestial: […] «y, como arrastrado por un impulso de ironía superior, Pickman había dado al rostro del joven una semejanza pavorosamente con sus propias facciones...»
Del mismo modo, más de una vez se insinúa de que él no es muy humano: «Reid tenía razón: Pickman no era del todo humano».
A esto se le puede considerar su tan amplio conocimiento para hacer obras de arte inspiradas en estas criaturas: «Tú bien sabes que se necesita un profundo conocimiento del arte para engendrar obras como las de Pickman. Hace falta una honda penetración en las entrañas mismas de la naturaleza. [...] y comprendí que sólo un paréntesis breve en la vigencia de las leyes de la naturaleza había permitido a un hombre pintar una cosa como aquella sin un modelo...». Y efectivamente, dada su naturaleza familiarizada a estas bestias, es cómo él tiene acceso a ellas para usarlas de modelo, o de verlas a cierta distancia sin correr tanto riesgo.
También me llama la atención como él sabe persuadirlas con su revolver. Y para darle más coherencia a esta mitología o lore, me gusta pensar que tiene su tiene su arma cargada con balas de plata.
En conclusión, por las venas de Pickman corre la sangre de aquellos aterradores seres.

Este título puede dejarnos con muchas preguntas. Muchas de ellas se pueden responder por sí solas si se toma la debida atención al detalle, como evidencié; pero, lo que es un hecho, es que Pickman tiene lazo directo con estas criaturas, ya sea porque él es un híbrido, o bien, porque fue uno de esos bebés convertidos de algún modo en aquellos mencionados trueques.
Puede que el verdadero final de Pickman tras su desaparición sea que haya vuelto con sus familiares bestias, para vivir a la usanza de ellos o algo así, y que, a partir de esto, ahora los humanos sean los protagonistas de sus lienzos en esta nueva etapa de su vida: una especie inversión de todo lo que ha vivido. Me gusta esta hipótesis mía, porque no le veo otro destino aparte del que plantee.
Otra cosa que me gusta es cómo se hace énfasis en el mundo subterráneo. Quizás qué clase de cosas desconocemos de lo que hay bajo nuestros pies. En este tipo de cuestiones pueden entrar las salamancas, el hermetismo, las logias mistéricas y muchas otras cosas más, de índoles esotéricas o conspirativas.

Sea como sea, El modelo de Pickman presenta una historia muy amena, interesante y, sobre todo, bien contada. Puede ser que si se analiza profundamente no sea la gran cosa; pero es una obra que cumple y que se la recomiendo a todos, en especial, a quienes dicen y creen que Lovecraft es un mal escritor.
Por todo lo expuesto, mi calificación es de ★★★★☆. Además, mi único reparo es que, en el mero final, las últimas estrofas no se sienten como si fueran las de una conclusión de Lovecraft, sino que, como las de Poe, pero no de las buenas.

Para otras reseñas de la colección Clásicos del terror, de editorial Planeta:

• 1) Historia de un muerto contada por él mismo, de Alexandre Dumas: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 2) El mortal inmortal, de Mary Shelley: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 3) La novia del espectro, de Washington Irving: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 4) El vampiro, de John Polidori: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 5) El cuento de la vieja niñera, de Elizabeth Gaskell: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 6) La marca de la bestia, de Rudyard Kipling: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 7) Markheim, de Robert Louis Stevenson: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 8) El modelo de Pickman, de Howard Phillips Lovecraft
• 9) La casa del juez, de Bram Stoker: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 10) La mujer alta, de Pedro Antonio de Alarcón: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 11) El convidado de las últimas fiestas, de Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
• 12) El Horla, de Guy de Maupassant: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh, this story was fine. It's not my favorite Lovecraft but it's not terrible either. I think maybe it just didn't age well – the narrator is completely freaked out over some realistic-looking scary paintings, which is hard to imagine when we see uber realistic monsters on the television every day. I mean, can you imagine screaming over the unveiling of a painting, even the creepiest painting in existence? Yeah, me neither. It's definitely an atmospheric and unsettling tale, though, and I enjoyed the twist at the end even if it was fairly apparent that it was coming. 3.4 stars, rounded down.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little horror from the middle of the roaring twenties is not about plot (there isn’t much, and the ending is obvious), but about atmosphere.

The narrator descends to a metaphorical and possibly literal netherworld that wasn’t “merely made, but actually grew”.
“It isn’t so very far from the elevated as distance goes, but it’s centuries away as the soul goes.”

Lovecraft carefully ramps up unease at the unknown. As the light dims, darkness dawns. Realisation dawns too: ghastly, rather than ghostly.


Image: “Insight into Hell 3” by Hieronymus Bosch, c1500 (Source.)

“Only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear… It’s my business to catch the overtones of the soul.”

Setting a horror story in the context of Bostonian artists creates an excellent disconnect that Lovecraft milks like an expert but sadistic dairymaid.

“The awful, the blasphemous horror, and the unbelievable loathsomeness and moral foetor came from simple touches quite beyond the power of words to classify… I never elsewhere saw the actual breath of life so fused into a canvas.”

More

I think this was my first taste of Lovecraft’s macabre world. “Like” is not quite the right word, but it’s excellent - thanks, Apatt.

You can read the story, free, HERE.

I read it in parallel with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart (see my review HERE), which also opens with an anonymous narrator declaring their sanity.

Several authors and artists came to mind as I read it, though it’s not much like any of them:

* Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray from 1891.
* Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from 1818.
* Dorothy L Sayers' short story The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face, published in 1928, the year after this! (see my review of it in an anthology of mysteries HERE).
* China Mieville’s The City and The City (see my review HERE).* Lucian Freud, which is most unfair, as his portraits are not really grotesque (though rarely flattering), but I had recently been to an exhibition of his works.
* Hieronymus Bosch.

See also “uncanny valley”: entities (monsters, robots, conversations) that are almost indistinguishable from real humans are far more unsettling than ones that are clearly not human.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in Weird Tales (October 1927), “Pickman’s Model”--although perhaps a little too pat and slick to rank among Lovecraft’s best—is not only remarkably effective as a piece of terror but also presents one of the clearest articulations of Lovecraft’s aesthetics that may be discovered in the tales themselves, asserting the paradox that the creation of otherwordly terror requires, above all, a realist’s eye and an expert’s knack for bringing the most unreal things into breathing, believable life.

Thurber, the narrator of our tale, describes to his friend Eliot the story of the painter Richard Upton Pickman, a man ostracized from good society because of the controversial and appalling images that he has chosen to commit to canvas. These perverse, fantastical images have been seen by his friends of evidence of mental derangement. Thurber, however tells us, that the figures on these figures are not fantasy images at all, but rather studies from life.

It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. But damn it all, it wasn’t even the fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountain-head of all panic—not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn’t the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, though any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.

It was the technique, Eliot—the cursed, the impious, the unnatural technique! As I am a living being, I never elsewhere saw the actual breath of life so fused into a canvas. The monster was there—it glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared—and I knew that only a suspension of Nature’s laws could ever let a man paint a thing like that without a model—without some glimpse of the nether world which no mortal unsold to the Fiend has ever had.

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

As is often the case with Lovecraft, this story is told post facto by a rather passive observer character to Eliot, a mutual acquaintance who inquires as to what happened to the friendship between the two men. I thought HPL did a good job with few words sketching this character, an artsy type who wants to be more dark and transgressive than he really is and hangs on the creepier and more talented Pickman until he finds out just how far Pickman has gone.

Note: not actually that far. There is no explicit sacrifice of babies or sex with monsters in this one. I don't think it comes across as that scary to a modern reader, although the content of the paintings was probably shocking at the time. I thought both stories I've read that were inspired by this were creepier. One was Crispin's Model, which actually seems more derived from other elements of the Mythos, and a thing about changelings I think was by Caitlin Kiernan that I read long ago but am pretty sure now was based on the painting "Lesson" of a squatting circle of dog-like things in a churchyard teaching a small child to feed like themselves.


A painting by Sidney Sime, one of the artists mentioned in the story.

[Orient · Rating 2 out of 5]

A spooky BR with Craig and Lovecraft as our entertainer.

I read it last night. A peculiar story. I drifted a couple of times in the beginning! It's quite bad as the story is short :D But, I must admit that this a bit creepy story worked for me in a way, the atmosphere was quite well created. I guess I had a stronger feeling just because it reminded me of Slade's Saxon (Ghoul) in a way. The main character felt like an odd person, too. But I prefer Slade's version more, it was way more believable! :)



You should be! :D

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it is Spooktober and someone Brad told me I finally had to read at least SOME of Lovecraft's short stories. Maybe that's true considering how many authors and producers of movies and TV shows have been inspired by the guy (whatever one might think of him as a person).

This, then, is the second short story of his I'm reading this month and it's about two Boston gentlemen talking. One seems to be inquiring after why the other has dropped all association and patronage of the artist Pickman. I samy "seems to" because he never has an active role - we can only surmise his behavior and questions from the narrator's reactions.
Pickman is a painter and apparently very gifted, his paintings seeming to have a life of their own.
The narrator was the last patron Pickman has had and got invited to a secondary studio where he saw things that the artist knew he couldn't show anywhere. That and - even more than that - an encounter at the place have the narrator extremely rattled and the reader extremely entertained.

It is perhaps not too easy for a modern reader to quite understand the narrator's sensibilities. Though I, personally, can attest to how unsettling it is when looking at a painting that is extremely life-life. Imagining living in a time like the one depicted in this story, it can only have been more intense a feeling.

Nevertheless, the events didn't manage to sweep me up quite as much as those in the other story I've read this month. It wasn't bad and it had atmosphere, but it didn't wow me.

You can read the story for free here: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/...

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonder what Lovecraft would think of Cannibal Corpse.

[Pedro Ceballos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Regular, la historia se centra en la descripción de las pinturas que realiza un artistas. Las pinturas reflejan imágenes terroríficas del infierno y de monstruos. Esta parte es atrayente, sin embargo, no hay acción, por lo tanto no da tanto miedo. No es uno de los relatos que recomendaría de Lovecraft.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's some truly haunting supernatural horror to whet your appetite for Halloween.

I love Lovecraft's technique here. Conversational, but rising in horror as our MC tries to describe what he experienced, starting out with normal controversy and winding up with several stages of new reveals.

But it's always the journey that I most appreciate. Every description, every addition, every plucked-out eyeball of discovery and gibbering holy madness, builds to a wonderful crescendo.

A middle passage, if you will:

*** Dances in the modern cemeteries were freely pictured, and another conception somehow shocked me more than all the rest—a scene in an unknown vault, where scores of the beasts crowded about one who held a well-known Boston guide-book and was evidently reading aloud. All were pointing to a certain passage, and every face seemed so distorted with epileptic and reverberant laughter that I almost thought I heard the fiendish echoes. The title of the picture was, “Holmes, Lowell, and Longfellow Lie Buried in Mount Auburn”. ***


No spoilers, but this is a beautiful tale and not at all problematic for anyone's modern taste. No startlingly racist comments, in other words.


Ahhh, life is art, art is life.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Lovecraft short, in which a man discusses an artist friend's incredibly life-like and fiendish portraits, read more like Poe than any of his other stories that I've read so far. Call it Poe-updated, because things like subways are mentioned. The setup and execution work superbly to create a nice build up and an effective wham-bam finish. This would make a good starting point for those looking to get into Lovecraft for the first time. It's relatively short, it's not too archaically verbose, and it doesn't delve into the Lovecraft world so that you need be familiar with his arcane canon. He wrote better stuff, but this is a solid story.

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A re-read.
When someone speaks of an artist's model, the first thing that probably leaps to mind is an attractive woman. But when an artist specializes in painting the weird, the grotesque and the macabre, the feminine form is likely not what he's seeking out. When the artist in this story invites a fan to see his secret studio, in the depths of Boston's North End slums, what is revealed has implications for the whole city.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

”I decided long ago that one must paint terror, as well as beauty, from life, so I did some exploring in places I have reason to know terror lives.”

”And what damnable expressiveness Pickman sometimes gave the sightless faces of this charnel booty.”

Richard Upton Pickman was a brilliant artist — according to the narrator the greatest artist in Boston. Descended from a great great grandmother hung as a witch in Salem, it was perhaps understandable that his art focused on the morbidly arcane. His art — brilliantly executed paintings of obscene and grotesque scenes and subjects — inspired such horror that they repelled nearly the entire Boston art community, who cut and shunned him despite his manifest talent.

Only Thurber, the story’s narrator, didn’t cut Pickman. A Great War veteran, he described himself as “hard boiled,” and “decently sophisticated.” Pickman’s art fascinated him, so when offered a private tour of Pickman’s studio to view works that no one else had seen, he accepted enthusiastically. But what he saw there, what he learned about Pickman’s models, left him terrified, shaken, and with a permanent phobia of subways and cellars.

Pickman’s Model is an excellent example of Lovecraft’s terror inducing talent. It is also one of his most accessible stories — a great place for someone new to the author to begin.

This story is in the public domain, and you can find an excellent audio version of it at this link:
https://youtu.be/ZJp-sajZyS8?si=adqll...

[ᴥ Irena ᴥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrator, Thurber, is telling his friend Elliot about the reason he 'dropped' Pickman when he admired him and his art so much. The rest is retelling of the last time he saw Pickman and his horrifying paintings.
Thurber starts with less important aspects of Pickman's art and behaviour, or at least the things that are already familiar to Elliot. Then the descriptions gradually become more and more sinister and horrifying only to end the story on the highest (for the story) note.
It doesn't matter if you know where Lovecraft is leading his reader to, it doesn't matter if after all those horror stories and books you've read so far not much can surprise you. The way the story ends is still creepy.

'It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in body claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its prey and seek a juicier morsel.'

It is even more interesting to check all the artists mentioned in the story when Thurber compares them to Pickman's art.

[Paras2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

creepy as expected. LOVED IT! especially the way it left me guessing what was really the origin of Pickman.

[Baal Of · Rating 3 out of 5]

One shouldn't judge the creature for taking on some extra work as a life model. Paying for college can be tough. My favorite things about this story is that Fallout 4 has a location called Pickman Gallery, which had an awesome little sub-plot.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very creepy story.

[Montserrat♨️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Siento unas! ganas! de pintar €=

Me he fijado que en los relatos de Lovecraft los personajes protagonistas suelen ser "duros", poco impresionables, y así se resaltan las consecuencias enloquecedoras para aquellos que entran en contacto con los saberes arcaicos, y con lo desconocido.

[Dave DelFavero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pickman’s Model is one of Lovecraft’s stories that came highly recommended by some readers so I gave it a shot.
I was impressed by Lovecraft’s penmanship and how he builds and creates his suspense. It’s basically a story about man’s retelling of events to a fellow named Elliot and how he was invited to Pickman’s secret cellar in Boston to look at some very shockingly vivid paintings of ghoulishly creatures that could jump out of the paintings. You can see how Stephen King certainly drew inspiration from this story.

4/5 stars

[Lena · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Fuseli and Goya before him, Richard Upton Pickman is a master at bringing fear to life on canvas. The story centers on the one dreadful monster portrait but the ones I’m desperate to see are his Fae inspired works.

“Pickman was showing what happens to those stolen babes - how they grow up.”

But even more frightening are the images of those monsters left in the soft cradles to grow up, wolves among sheep.

“Every face but one showed nobility and reverence, but that one reflected the mockery of the pit.”

Even Pickman’s discourse on tame-ghosts verses old-human-ghosts freaked me out.

“I want... ghosts of beings [who] have looked on hell and known the meaning of what they saw.”

This one is a favorite now, a highly visual and scary experience.

[Jimena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quizá lo más atractivo de esta obra sea lo siniestra, lo genuinamente escalofriante que es su atmósfera. El modelo de Pickman es una historia corta acerca de un pintor cuyos cuadros exhiben criaturas y actos abominables, la descripción de los mismos y de su efecto es tan efectiva que el lector puede hacerse eco de su carácter perturbador, de la incomodidad o incluso el malestar que generan pinturas que nunca vió.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly liked this one, as his urban nightmare type stories go.

"Upstanding, level-headed narrator makes dodgy friend who turns out to be spiralling down into a dark and mysterious lifestyle, giving narrator a glimpse of the horrors that lie on the other side before inevitable demise of said friend. Narrator is reduced to nervous wreck by what he has seen."

This could describe any number of Lovecraft's stories, but it continues to prove an excellent premise to draw out the vast array of weird and wonderful ideas he had.

At first I thought this would turn into 'Lovecraft does Dorian Gray', like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is 'Lovecraft does The Wizard of Oz', but no - that would not be open-ended enough for this author.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

According to wikipedia, 'An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia dismisses the story as "relatively conventional"'.

If by that they mean "boring" and "nothing happens", then I suppose that is true. I was never sold on our narrator's fear and did not see the slightest reason for it until the last moment, by which time it was too late.

[Godzilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ending twist is visible from space, but that doesn't detract from the story.

Lovecraft evokes a dark and mysterious setting, with the character of Pickman painted with particular relish.

Whilst it's never going to set you screaming, it's a deeply unsettling tale, although tame by modern standards, Lovecraft leaves you to imagine your own worst horrors and give yourself sleepless nights.

[Heidi *Bookwyrm Babe, Voyeur of Covers, Caresser of Spines, Unashamed Smut Slut, the Always Sleepy Wyrm of the Stacks, and Drinker of Tea and Wine* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilling.
Artistic.
Fantastic.

Also, too short.

[Graeme Rodaughan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sensitive art critic discovers that his favorite artist draws inspiration from photographs of the real world ... and promptly dumps him for painting demons!

4, 'Shattered Illusions,' stars