Pickman, Richard Upton

   In “Pickman’s Model,” a painter, of Salem ancestry, whose paintings of outre subjects are assumed to be the fruits of a keen imagination, but are ultimately found to be from real life and from firsthand knowledge of forbidden subjects. He is compared to Gustave Dore, Sidney Sime, and Anthony Angarola. He disappears mysteriously, after emptying his pistol at an unseen monster lurking in the basement of his studio in the North End of Boston during a visit by the narrator of the story. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,Pickman becomes a ghoul, like the subject of many of his paintings in “Pickman’s Model.”

   HPL describes Pickman not as a fantaisiste, but as a realist—a term HPL came to feel best described himself following his shift toward cosmic fictional themes around 1926.