In “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” the artist who paints Dorian’s portrait is Basil Hallward.
Basil is a talented painter and a friend of Dorian Gray. He becomes fascinated by Dorian’s extraordinary youth and beauty, which inspire Basil’s masterpiece. While Basil paints, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, whose hedonistic ideas profoundly influence him.
Dorian wishes that the portrait would age and bear the marks of his sins while he remains physically young. The supernatural bargain becomes the novel’s central device: the painting grows increasingly corrupted even as Dorian’s appearance stays beautiful. Basil represents artistic feeling and moral conscience, while Lord Henry represents seductive intellectual influence.
Sibyl Vane is an actress and Dorian’s former love interest, James Vane is her brother, and Lord Henry is the aristocrat who shapes Dorian’s worldview. None of them paints the portrait. Wilde originally published the work as a shorter novella in 1890, then expanded it into the 1891 novel.