Tag Archives: art and the audience

Poe’s “Oval Portrait: and The Picture of Dorian Gray: the Artist, the Subject, and the Audience*

After reading Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), I was struck by how much his theme about the value of art resembled the one found in Poe’s 1842 short fictional work, “The Oval Portrait.” Both stories focus on the relationship between the artist, his subject, and the viewer, or, in the case of…