Pickman's Model

By H. P. Lovecraft

From “the original master of horror,” a 1927 short story about an artist banished for his ghoulish paintings and the supernatural secret behind his art (Publishers Weekly).
 
In this classic short story from H. P. Lovecraft, enter the gothic world of Pickman, a painter notoriously banned from the Boston Art Club for his grotesque images. But once inside the artist’s studio in the slums of the North End, the mystery behind Pickman’s artistic choices is shockingly revealed.
 
“A master of macabre fantasy and horror.” —Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Jan 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781504083829

H. P. Lovecraft

Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his many classic horror stories, many of which were published in book form only after his death in 1937, are ‘At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror’ (1964), ‘Dagon and Other Macabre Tales’ (1965), and ‘The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions’ (1970).

Book preview

Pickman’s Model

H. P. Lovecraft

Pickman’s Model

You needn’t think I’m crazy, Eliot—plenty of others have queerer prejudices than this. Why don’t you laugh at Oliver’s grandfather, who won’t ride in a motor? If I don’t like that damned subway, it’s my own business; and we got here more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We’d have had to walk up the hill from Park Street if we’d taken the car.

I know I’m more nervous than I was when you saw me last year, but you don’t need to hold a clinic over it. There’s plenty of reason, God knows, and I fancy I’m lucky to be sane at all. Why the third degree? You didn’t use to be so inquisitive.

Well, if you must hear it, I don’t know why you shouldn’t. Maybe you ought to, anyhow, for you kept writing me like a grieved parent when you heard I’d begun to cut the Art Club and keep away from Pickman. Now that he’s disappeared I go around to the club once in a while, but my nerves aren’t what they were.

No, I don’t know what’s become of Pickman, and I don’t like to guess. You might have surmised I had some inside information when I dropped him—and that’s why I don’t want to think where he’s gone. Let the police find what they can—it won’t be much, judging

Reviews for Pickman's Model

[joe73-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lovecraft once again points out the fallacy of human curiosity and makes it very clear how we are all going to go the way of the dodo and just want to lay down and die. Some of his characters are little stubborn and their nosing gets them in the end. This is probably one of his more visceral stories. It is about evil and evil being more evil than evil. Netflix recently released a short film version of this and while the stories differ slightly it was well done. It seems Hollywood has a monster of a time attempting to translate this mans work onto film.

[altheaann · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.