“The Artist of the Beautiful” was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and first appeared in United States Magazine and Democratic Review (June 1844). Hawthorne (1804-1864) was one of the two or three most important American writers of fiction in the first half of the nineteenth century. “The Artist of the Beautiful” is seen as a classic, but despite its virtues the story is not only disappointing but at times is infuriating.

Owen Warland is an artist. Even as a child, he produced inspired and beautiful work. His medium was wood and metal. As an adult he seeks to create works of art that are not useful but which express the principle of the Beautiful. But the inhabitants of the New England town Warland lives in see no benefit to works of art that are not useful. Warland’s old master, Peter Hovenden, has only scorn for Warland’s efforts. Hovenden’s daughter Annie, a childhood friend to Owen, is more kindly inclined to Owen, but she does not really appreciate him. And Robert Danforth, the local blacksmith and a friend of sorts to Owen, has a good-natured contempt for Owen, seeing far more utility (and therefore good) in his own brute efforts with fire and iron than in Owen’s delicate attempts. Owen is wounded by their scorn for his work–Owen’s feelings are as delicate and as fragile as his art–but he persists in striving toward excellence despite several setbacks. Owen tries and fails, tries and fails, is inspired by nature, especially butterflies, but falls short of capturing true beauty. Annie, who Owen is in love with, marries Danforth, which emotionally crushes Owen, for he saw Annie as both an inspiration and as the one person who could truly appreciate his art. Owen recovers from this blow and returns to his work, and eventually, after much effort, creates a miraculous, beautiful artificial butterfly which has absorbed his “being” into itself and takes its energy from his “spiritual essence.” When Robert and Annie see the mechanical butterfly, they are amazed. When Peter Hovenden sees it and it alights on his finger, it begins to die. When Annie’s infant son touches the butterfly, it initially gains great vigor and life, but then the child crushes it with his hand. Owen is unaffected by this seeming setback, however, for

He had caught a far other butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in his eyes, while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the Reality.¹

“The Artist of the Beautiful” is told in a different style from the other Hawthorne stories mentioned in this book. Rather than use the straightforward delivery of “Young Goodman Brown” or the sardonic tone of “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” Hawthorne chooses a philosophical style, so that “Artist” has several asides about the role of the artist and the nature of the Beautiful. The reader’s reaction to these asides will depend on their appreciation of (and tolerance for) those philosophical asides. Those who enjoy such things will find them profound. Those who do not will find them annoying despite Hawthorne’s skill in expressing them.

More distressing is the basic theme of the story, that Owen Warland is a delicate artiste unappreciated by the coarse and thoughtless bourgeois townsfolk. In Hawthorne’s view, the artist is a superior being, “hard, brute force darkens and confuses the spiritual element,”² and those who scorn the artist and value utilitarian work, “main strength and reality,”³ are wrong and inferior. It might be that Hawthorne was having the reader on, and that his comments about how the artist must defy the “incredulous world” are sarcasm. But that is doubtful. More likely is that Hawthorne was buying into the Romantic idea of the artist as a higher being who is too sensitive for a coarse and undeserving world. Modern readers may find this to be irritating, pretentious twaddle, even when delivered as skillfully as in “The Artist of the Beautiful.”

“The Artist of the Beautiful” is generally seen by critics as a “classic” and “masterpiece.” It has easily discernible symbols and themes of the sort academics love to explore: Hovenden as rationalism; Annie as love and emotion; Danforth as strength and energy; and Warland as beauty and the ideal. And the story certainly works as early science fiction, although the details about the artificial butterfly are left vague, and the story can just as easily be interpreted as fantasy, with magic being what creates and motivates the butterfly. But the story’s characterization is simplistic and harnessed to (and restrained by) Hawthorne’s themes, so that Warland and the others are not so much three-dimensional characters (though Hawthorne does his best) as instruments Hawthorne uses to state his case.

“The Artist of the Beautiful” is certainly well-told, but its content is a disappointment.

Print: Brian Stableford, ed., Scientific Romance: An International Anthology of Pioneering Science Fiction. Mineola, NY: Dover Press, 2017.

Millicent Bell, Hawthorne’s View of the Artist. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1962.

¹ Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Artist of the Beautiful,” Mosses from an Old Manse (New York: A.L. Burt, 1912), 381.

² Hawthorne, “The Artist of the Beautiful,” 363.

³ Hawthorne, “The Artist of the Beautiful,” 359.