Life vs. Art Theme Analysis

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” is a frame story (essentially, a story within a story), which centers around life and art. The outer story follows the unnamed narrator as he spends the night in an abandoned chateau in the mountains. While there, he admires the impressive paintings that adorn the walls and becomes particularly taken with a portrait of a beautiful young woman, which is encased in an oval frame. The inner story explores the life of the woman in the portrait and her husband, who was the painter. Even though the portrait is wildly beautiful and moving, the couple’s story wasn’t a happy one: the husband was obsessed with his art, so much so that he didn’t notice that his wife was dying right before his eyes while he was painting her portrait. Through the couple’s tragic story and the narrator’s captivation with the painting, Poe spins a cautionary tale about pursuing art at the expense of real life outside of the canvas, but also suggests that perhaps disconnecting from reality is simply the cost of great art.

Through the character of the painter, the story suggests that being an artist requires an intense—perhaps even fanatical—level of devotion to one’s work that necessarily forces the artist to disengage from reality. In Poe’s words, the painter “grow[s] wild with the ardor of his work, and turn[s] his eyes from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife.” In other words, the painter is so passionate and enthusiastic about art that he lets it absorb his attention completely. Even though he’s painting his wife’s portrait, and is thus studying her face closely, he doesn’t truly see his wife’s “countenance,” or appearance. Despite being in close quarters with her and looking at her face day in and day out, the painter doesn’t notice that she’s growing pale, weak, and sickly—the reality he’s creating on the canvas becomes more real in his eyes than the reality beyond the painting’s confines.

The painter becomes so detached from reality that he begins to mistake his art for reality itself, which proves beneficial for his craft but disastrous for his real life. The painter, “entranced before the work which he [has] wrought,” starts to view his wife exclusively through the lens of the painting. The real object of his “ardor,” or obsession, is not his living, breathing spouse—it’s the arrangement of shapes and colors on the canvas that simulates her presence in an ideal way. As the painter grows more invested in painting the perfect portrait, he fails to see the real-life impact his single-minded devotion is having on his wife: he “would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him.” When he puts the finishing touches on his painting, the artist cries out, “This is indeed Life itself!” Ironically, though, the painter has grown shaky and pale by this point, and his wife has already wasted away and died—the painter’s fanatical dedication to his art has sapped him and his wife of their vitality.

Poe thus seems to suggest that art is not necessarily a mere interpretation of real life that leaves reality itself unaffected. The model, described as a “maiden of the rarest beauty” who is “just ripening into womanhood,” is drained of life over the course of the painting’s creation, growing “daily more dispirited and weak,” and finally dying just as the painting reaches the height of its perfection. Through the wife’s tragic death and the painter’s blind devotion to his art, the story drives home the idea that getting lost in art—mistaking it for reality—is dangerous and has serious costs.

In the outer story of the narrative, the narrator’s obsession with the painting seems to rival the painter’s, suggesting that consuming art can be just as absorbing, forcing the viewer to detach from reality. When he first sees the painting, the narrator immediately snaps his eyes shut, unaware of why he is doing so. Once he thinks about it, he realizes that the painting was so lifelike and startling that he needed to take a moment to compose himself and make sure his eyes aren’t deceiving him. Even though closing his eyes is an attempt to “calm and subdue [his] fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze,” shutting his eyes upon seeing the painting seems to reflect the way that art can make a person shut out the rest of the world. Furthermore, even before he finds the specific portrait for which the story is named, the narrator is entranced by the other paintings in the mansion: “devoutly, devoutly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight came.” Here, the narrator becomes out of touch with reality as he loses track of time, highlighting how art can deeply impact the viewer and disconnect them from real life.

In “The Oval Portrait,” Poe crafts a characteristically bleak and chilling tale. Through the narrator and painter’s dual obsession with the painting, Poe emphasizes the dark side of art, suggesting that it can make artists and viewers alike disconnect dangerously from reality. However, it’s important to remember that Poe, too, is an artist, and that his story isn’t a condemnation of art or a protest against creative passion—he’s not even suggesting that the painter shouldn’t have created the titular portrait. Instead, “The Oval Portrait” serves as an unsettling reminder of art’s towering power, and leaves readers to wonder if perhaps all great art comes at a steep human cost.