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Pickman's Model
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"Pickman's Model" is a Short Story by H. P. Lovecraft, first published in the October 1927 issue of Weird Tales. It introduces the ghoul to the Cthulhu Mythos; Lovecraft's Dreamlands story The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath follows up on some of the questions and characters that appear in this story.Lovecraft was fond of the Twist Ending for some of his shorter works, and the one for this story is generally thought to be one of his most potent, right up there with "The Outsider (1926)" because of the sheer punch of the very last line.Boston painter Richard Upton Pickman has disappeared recently, and his former friend Thurber has a dark story to tell about him. Thurber regales Audience Surrogate Eliot about Pickman's strange artwork — portraits of monsters called ghouls, so lifelike and terrifying that no respectable gallery or museum would show them. Other artists cut ties with Pickman altogether. Only Thurber remained willing to associate with him, and the frightening artist soon offers to give Thurber a private showing of his work.When Thurber ventures into Pickman's studio, he sees paintings more horrifying than anything Pickman had dared publicly show. When he and Pickman hear something crawling about on the other side of the door, Pickman shoots at it, blaming an infestation of rats.Thurber had, just before this, plucked a piece of paper off an easel and pocketed it. When he looks at it later, he realizes to his horror... that it is, in fact, a photo that reveals Pickman isn't painting creatures from his imagination, but reality.For "Pickman's Model", Lovecraft took inspiration from "Amina", which was reprinted earlier in 1927. The setting of Boston may have come about in response to the last line in "Amina" reassuringly asserting that ghouls don't dwell outside of Persia. Influence from Vathek can also be detected in that Lovecraft's ghouls live underground as they do in the novel. Following "Pickman's Model", this entered popular culture as a recurring ghoul trait.With "Amina" preceding it, "Pickman's Model" is at the center of a network of related ghoul stories. Based on Pickman's painting "Subway Accident", Robert Barbour Johnson wrote "Far Below". Robert Bloch, Lovecraft's protégé at the time, wrote "The Grinning Ghoul", a retreading of "Pickman's Model". And both Clark Ashton Smith and Henry S. Whitehead followed Lovecraft's example by also letting "Amina" inspire them to a story, respectively "The Nameless Offspring" and "The Chadbourne Episode".Pickman's Model was adapted into a segment of the anthology series Night Gallery, and then again by Alan Moore (with a few names changed) in Issue 7 of Providence. The horror anthology series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities features another adaptation of this story. | |
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I Need a Freaking Drink | |
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I Need a Freaking Drink: Thurber repeatedly demands alcohol to steel his nerves as he recounts the story of his acquaintance with Pickman. For his last drink, he switches it up with coffee. | |
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Invasion of the Baby Snatchers | |
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Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: The ghouls steal human children and leave ghoulish youngsters in their place. The ghoul whelps appear human enough to fool their host parents into accepting them, and the kidnapped human children are raised as — and eventually transform into — ghouls. There are hints - eventually confirmed in Lovecraft's later work The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - that Pickman himself is the product of such a swap. | |
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Chekhov's Gun | |
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Chekhov's Gun: Thurber reaches for a curled-up photo to stretch it open, thinking it depicts a landscape that Pickman intends to paint. Just as he holds it, Pickman urges him out of his cellar studio with haste because something is approaching. In the suddenness, Thurber accidentally pockets the photo. When much later he retrieves it from his coat, he gives it a look and sees not a landscape but a ghoul. | |
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Nightmare Fetishist | |
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Nightmare Fetishist: Richard Pickman, who loves slums and cellars, paints nightmarish scenes, and convinces ghouls to model for his artwork. | |
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Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor | |
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Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: One of the paintings shows a group of ghouls laughing their asses off as one of their number reads from a book. The title of the painting is "Holmes, Lowell, and Longfellow Lie Buried in Mount Auburn" - they're laughing because they know they've devoured those corpses, but humans don't. | |
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Mad Artist | |
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Mad Artist: Richard Upton Pickman is a descendant of a woman hanged as a witch in Salem, and he comments that his "four-times-great-grandmother could have told you things" of magic. Pickman locates his studio in the slums of the North End in order to draw on the "night-spirit of antique horror" left by pirates, smugglers, and witches. He produces paintings of monsters so lifelike and frightening that artists and galleries universally reject his work, and his acquaintances even complain that his face is changing in ways that aren't quite human. It is ultimately revealed that Pickman's strange behavior and realistic art stem from his use of real, actual ghouls as models for his paintings. How does he do this, you ask? As one of the passages quoted above implies, he is partly a ghoul himself. | |
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Late-Arrival Spoiler | |
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Late-Arrival Spoiler: It is perfectly possible for a reader to pick up The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath before touching "Pickman's Model". If that happens, they're going to know what the ending of "Pickman's Model" is about within five paragraphs or so. | |
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The Reveal | |
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The Reveal: Thurber absentmindedly pockets a reference photograph from Pickman's studio, and only looks at the photo later. | |
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Sleep Paralysis Creature | |
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Sleep Paralysis Creature: Thurber mentions that some of Pickman's paintings show the ghouls "squatting on the chests of sleepers", invoking this trope. An earlier comparison between Pickman and the real-life painter Henry Fuseli suggests Lovecraft probably had "The Nightmare" - one of the most iconic depictions of a Sleep Paralysis Creature - on his mind while writing this story. | |
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Gendered Insult | |
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Gendered Insult: Both Thurber and Pickman refer to art critics who don't like Pickman's work with derisive female descriptions, the first with "fussy old women" and the latter with "those cursed old maids". | |
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Must Have Caffeine | |
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Must Have Caffeine: After downing one glass of alcohol after another for the duration of his recounting, Thurber ends on a black coffee and urges Eliot to take his coffee black too to sit through the conclusion as to why Thurber cut ties with Pickman. | |
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Shout-Out | |
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Shout-Out: "Pickman's Model" has quite a few a hefty amount of references to real-life people and events. Thurber compares Pickman's brand of artistry to several real-life painters: Henry Fuseli, Gustave Doré, Sidney Sime, Anthony Angarola, and Francisco de Goya. Another artist made mention of is Clark Ashton Smith, who also was a friend and colleague of Lovecraft with several more mutual references to the other in their works. Two of Pickman's paintings are described in a way that resembles a real-life painting. The first painting has one or more ghouls "squatting on the chests of sleepers", which is reminiscent of The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. The second painting depicts "a colossal and nameless blasphemy" that holds "a thing that had been a man" as it gnaws "at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy." This reminds of Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco de Goya. The Salem witch trials of 1692-1693 are part of the story. Cotton Mather, who played a significant role in the scale of death brought on the trials, is mentioned several times, as are his books Magnalia and Wonders of the Invisible World. The figures of Edmund Andros and William Phipps, who failed to stop the trials, are also mentioned. | |
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Spooky Painting | |
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Spooky Painting: Pickman's oeuvre consists of nothing but eerie paintings. His personal gallery includes portraits of ghouls nibbling on human corpses, attacking in the subway tunnels, and dancing around a hanged witch. Pickman's work is so disturbing that it cannot be shown publicly, and mainstream Boston artists cease associating with him. Even Thurber screams at the sight of some of the more gruesome paintings. The spookiness level reaches true Lovecraftian levels when Thurber realizes the piece of paper he pocketed without thinking is a live photograph of a ghoul — everything Pickman paints is based on reality. | |
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Our Ghouls Are Creepier | |
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Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls are canine humanoids who dwell underground and eat corpses stolen from graves. They snatch human infants and replace them with young ghouls in a classic changeling swap, and it is hinted that the kidnapped babies grow into ghouls themselves. While dangerous, the ghouls are also sentient to the point of being literate and possessing a morbid sense of humor. Later, Dream Quest develops this still further, even presenting ghouls in a strangely sympathetic light. | |
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Changeling Tale | |
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Changeling Tale: Ghouls exchange their own children for human ones. Human children are raised as ghouls and grow up to become as them. One of Pickman's paintings, "The Lesson", depicts a circle of ghouls in a churchyard surrounding a human child as they teach it to partake in corpse consumption. The ghoul children, meanwhile, grow up as humans, but always keep something off about them, though nothing so bad that every single person will pick up on it. The witches and possibly pirates that had their home in New England were, in fact, ghouls among humans. Pickman himself is also a ghoul by birth yet raised human. He is, however, becoming more and more ghoul-like as he finds kinship with ghouls while all his human connections cut ties with him for his evident otherness. | |
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Insult Backfire | |
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Insult Backfire: Thurber doesn't aim to insult Pickman, but can't help but be "speechless with fright and loathing" at seeing Pickman's secret paintings. From Pickman's reaction, he believes that the man understood the situation and felt highly complimented. | |
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Real After All | |
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Real After All: The photo that Thurber takes with him depicts an actual ghoul in Pickman's studio, which proves that the artist is painting the monsters from life. | |
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Was Once a Man | |
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Was Once a Man: On occasion, ghouls switch out their own children with human ones and the ghoul children grow up in the image of humans. They're only a little off if one knows what to pay attention to. Those ghouls that return to their species eventually come to resemble them. As for the switched-out human children, they too come to resemble ghouls. If they can become human again by rejoining human society is unexplored. | |
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