Pickman's Model

Thurber's once-close friendship with the artist Richard Upton Pickman has left him shaken, withdrawn, and unable to bear subways, cellars, or any place that suggests a hidden life beneath the surface. Pickman is no mere painter of shocks: his grotesque canvases, Thurber believes, reveal a genius so exact and so unsparing that they seem to expose horrors too real to dismiss as fantasy. Drawn into the old North End of Boston, Thurber finds Pickman's secret studio in a decaying house, reached by neglected alleys, a cellar well, and the city's buried tunnels. There, among meticulous sketches and photographic studies, he confronts paintings of ghouls, graveyards, and half-human creatures rendered with terrifying realism. Pickman insists the past still lives under the streets, in old houses, witchcraft, pirates, and unseen presences. As the images grow more specific and more disturbing, Thurber realizes the artist's work may be based on direct experience. What he discovers in the darkness outside the studio door confirms his worst fear: Pickman has not been inventing his nightmares, but painting from life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.