The Oval Portrait Summary & Analysis

“The Oval Portrait” opens with the unnamed narrator and his servant, Pedro, making “forcible entrance” into an abandoned chateau in the Apennine Mountains. For reasons never made clear, the narrator is severely injured, slightly delirious, and therefore incapable of spending the night in the open air. The two men hole up in a remote bed chamber whose decorations are “rich, yet tattered and antique.” It is an oddly-shaped room that is full of nooks due to the chateau’s “bizarre architecture.” The chamber boasts a number of tapestries, “armorial trophies,” and “an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque.” The paintings arouse the narrator’s interest. Wishing to contemplate them, he commands Pedro to light a tall candelabrum that stands at the foot of the bed. He also finds on his pillow a small book that provides an overview of the room’s pictures.

 While Pedro sleeps, the narrator scrutinizes the paintings and reads this guide book, completely engrossed, until at length the hour of midnight comes. Dissatisfied with the position of the candelabrum, he moves it so as to shed more light on the book—and suddenly notices a painting that has so far escaped his attention. It’s a portrait of a girl who is “just ripening into womanhood.” The painting exerts an immediately overwhelming yet ambiguous effect on the narrator, forcing him momentarily to close his eyes and to wonder precisely what it is about the image that he finds so startling.

The narrator gives a brief description of the portrait. It is a “vignette” painted “much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully.” It depicts the girl’s head and shoulders, with the rest of her body unseen. The narrator admires the painting’s execution and the beauty of its subject, but is truly astounded by a third factor—its absolute lifelikeness, which “confounds,” “subdues,” and “appalls” him. He gazes at the portrait for an hour, eyes riveted upon it, before returning the candelabrum to its previous position and turning to the relevant description in the guide book.   

The guide book contains an account of the portrait’s painter and its subject, who turn out to be husband and wife. The former, a renowned portrait painter, is a brooding, passionate man who’s wholly devoted to his work, to the point that it seems like he already has “a bride in his Art.” The latter is “a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee.” The artist’s wife hates nothing but the vocation of her husband, since she regards his art as a rival for his affections. Vivacious though she is, the girl is also meek and submissive, and bends to the will of her husband, who’s eager to paint her portrait, because she knows how greatly he values his work.

The painter begins work on the portrait—and the physical and psychological state of his wife immediately begins to decline, her health and spirits “withered” by the process. The painter, however, fails to see this—he’s too engrossed in his art, and pays almost no attention to his wife. She, for her part, does not complain. As the painting nears its completion and becomes ever more lifelike, the girl declines further, almost as if her vital energies are being drawn out of her and into the canvas. Just as her image reaches a height of perfection, the painter finally deigns to look up at his wife—only to discover that she has died.