Oscar Wilde The Painter\'s studio analysis PDF

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analisi del testo The painter's studio tratto da The picture of Dorian Gray di Oscar Wilde...

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Oscar Wilde – “The Picture o “Basil’ss studio studio”” – Analysis off Dorian Gr Gray” ay” – “Basil’ The extract is from the Oscar Wilde’s most famous novel: The picture of Dorian Gray. It is part of the novel’s first chapter. The text contains the partial description of one of the settings of the entire novel: the studio of the painter that realized the portrait. The most important element is the portrait realized by the painter, the two characters (Lord Henry Wotton and the painter Basil Hallward) of the scene discuss about its beauty and about the painter’s wanting not to expose it. Their conversation and the style of the description allow the reader to recognize some of the Aestheticism’s most important elements. The extract is made up by two sequences: the first contains the description of the room and has the function to introduce the scene and the portrait of Dorian Gray; the second one reports the dialogue between the two characters due to compare their points of view. The first sequence presents another division: there are two different moments of description characterized by the senses used. The first paragraph describes the studio in his entirety using the sense of smell. Nouns like “odour”, “scent” and “perfume” refer to the smell of garden’s flowers: the inside of the studio is described while its outside. The three following paragraphs use the sense of sight describing not the room in general but the little single elements that compose it. In the first sentence of the second paragraph, the verb “smoking” creates a bound with the first one; there is an opposition between outside and inside: the studio is filled by the delicious flowers’ perfume coming from the garden but it is also characterized by the bad smell of smoke coming from Lord Wotton. The human presence or the presence of Mr Wotton in particular, makes the setting become darker, as the use of the noun “shadows” and of the adjectives “sullen” and “oppressive” make visible. The atmosphere becomes gloomier because of the last sentence of the second paragraph: the simile between the “roar of London” and the “distant organ” recalls a gloomy note; a gloomy scream, which bounded to the image of the organ, may refer to death. The portrait introduced in the third paragraph is located at the centre of the room before described. The beauty of the young man painted is then connoted as a dark one; it refers to the role of the picture in the novel: it will become the dark side of Dorian’s personality. The unobtrusive third person narrator now introduces the second character of the passage: the painter who realized the

portrait. The beauty of the paint is expressed both directly (“a young man of extraordinary personal beauty”) and through the physical reactions of the painter looking at it (“a smile of pleasure passed across his face”) in the last paragraph of the descriptive sequence. The young man’s beauty is the protagonist also of the second sequence of the extract: the dialogue between the two characters opens with Lord Wotton’s opinion about the paint. The beauty of the portrait is underlined by the expression “it is your best work”, that puts it in a higher ground than anything else in the studio. Finding the portrait beautiful is the only thing that the two men have in common: Lord Wotton wants to expose it while Mr. Hallward wants to take it for himself.. According to Lord Wotton, the portrait is “the best thing” the painter “has ever done”: his best work is the best thing he has done, his work is his life, so art is his life. This is one of the principles of Aestheticism: make of life a work of art. The same concept is presented in another way in another assertion of the character: “there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”. Art must be shown to people, people must talk about art and then people must talk about the Aesthetics’ life. Lord Wotton’s reaction to the painter’s response underlines another core element of Aestheticism: he laughs because of Mr. Hallward putting some of himself in the portrait. This refers to the role of art in the Aesthetic movement: art is not bounded to morality, it is not part of the individual’s psychology; it only has to be beauty to see and the painter’s putting himself in the portrait is opposite to this. In conclusion, the text underlines two of the core points of the Aestheticism poetics of which Oscar Wilde is part: to make the life become an art and “art for art sake”. It does it in two sequences: The first with the function of introducing the portrait and underlining the central position in life according the Aestheticism way of thinking; The second one exploiting the two principal elements of the Aesthetic movement according the role of art in the life of the artist....