Verdeurs: Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray, and the Colors of Decadence

When Basil Hallward discovers the distorted portrait of Dorian Gray in chapter 13 Wilde's eponymous novel, he first ascribes changes to “some wretched mineral poison” his paints. Although passage corresponds climax story, it has rarely been discussed from a chromatic perspective. And yet, color mattered Wilde as well many decadent friends. Drawing on canonical text The Picture (1891), which revisits perspective, this article explores literary inscription new, shifting materialities order shed light what Théophile Gautier, seminal 1868 essay Baudelaire, defined “palette”: “veined with greenness ( verdeurs ) decomposition.”