The Artist of the Beautiful

"Slim and delicate, fascinated by the ideal, [the artist Owen] Warland stands in sharp contrast both to the shrewd Yankee, Peter Hovenden, who is also the father of Annie, the woman Warland loves, and to Robert Danforth, the physically powerful, good natured, but intellectually limited blacksmith who takes Annie for his wife. From the outset Warland's dream is to imbue a mechanism with spirit.... On and off throughout the tale he devotes energy to this project and ultimately creates an excruciatingly delicate butterfly that he offers as a belated wedding gift to Annie and Robert. The butterfly delights Annie, interests Robert, earns the scorn of old Peter Hovenden and is finally crushed in the infantile but mighty grasp of the child who bears an uncanny and malignant resemblance to his grandfather, Peter Hovenden, the man whose coarse and ill humored temperament has been the bane of Warland's existence. The destruction of Warland's life work, however distressing to Annie and perhaps the reader, does not upset Owen Warland as he has discovered that 'the reward of all high performance must be sought within itself, or sought in vain.'" -- <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/AlienationOfTheArtist/TheArtist/Introduction.html">David Donavel</a>

First published in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, June 1844.