“The Painter” is a sestina published by John Ashbery in his debut collection, Some Trees (1956). Considered a member of the New York School, Ashbery pushed the boundaries of representationalism in his long and successful avant-garde literary career. Despite the relative traditionalism of “The Painter” in terms of technique and style, the narrative of the poem expresses many of Ashbery’s key ideas about art, becoming a kind of theoretical guide for his later and more obscure work. As a poet, Ashbery stuck close to the artists and visual art of his day, drawing from abstract expressionism to find new ways of writing poetry. “The Painter” is exemplary of Ashbery’s preoccupation with painting and his understanding of the role of art and the artist in society.

Poet Biography

John Lawrence Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York in 1927 to a farmer father and a biology teacher mother. Spending his childhood at an all-boys school, Ashbery read and began writing poetry. Before he graduated high school, two of his poems were published in Poetry magazine after a classmate submitted them under his own name without Ashbery’s permission. As an adult, Ashbery earned his bachelor’s degree cum laude from Harvard University (then College), and his master of arts degree from Columbia University. Ashbery lived in New York, rubbing shoulders with innumerable writers and painters of the time, working as a copywriter and art critic.

After receiving a Fulbright Fellowship, Ashbery moved to France. While overseas, the poet became acquainted with the French painting and poetry scenes, which continued to impact his writing. After the publication of many books of poetry, Ashbery began teaching—first at Brooklyn College, then Bard College, and finally Wesleyan University. During his lifetime he received numerous honors and awards, including an election to Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an appointment to Poet Laureate of New York State, and a chancellorship with the Academy of American Poets. In 2017, he died of natural causes at 90 years of age in his Hudson, New York home alongside his husband, David Kermani. By that time, Ashbery had achieved a degree of popular and critical success as a poet that has arguably been uncontested in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States.

Poem Text

Ashbery, John. “The Painter.” 1956. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Ashbery introduces the subject of his poem “The Painter” in its title, leaving the poem to jump immediately into the action of its narrative. The reader finds the eponymous painter “[s]itting” between the ocean and “the buildings” (Line 1), trying to paint “the sea’s portrait” (Line 2). However, his efforts are fruitless: “there was never any paint on his canvas” (Line 7) because the painter “expected” (Line 4) the sea to paint “its own portrait” (Line 6).

This apparently unproductive artistic strategy is quickly put to a stop by “the people who lived in the buildings” (Line 8), who “[p]ut [the painter] to work” (Line 9). The people urge the painter to use his brush “[a]s a means to an end” (Line 10), hoping to make him produce actual paintings. They also discourage him from painting the sea, considering it too “angry and large” (Line 11) and not subject enough “[t]o a painter’s moods” (Line 12).

Unable to communicate to the “people who lived in the buildings” (Line 8) the goals of his artistic practice, the painter does what they ask and “[chooses] his wife for a new subject” (Line 15). However, the painter depicts his wife as “vast, like ruined buildings” (Line 16), not quite following the wishes of the building dwellers for whom he switched subjects. The painter likes his new painting, though, and is “[s]lightly encouraged” (Line 19) by its result.

Despite—or perhaps because—of his success with the portrait of his wife, the painter “[goes] back to the sea for his subject” (Line 24). This time, he “dip[s] his brush / In the sea” (Lines 19-20), praying that his soul will “wreck[ ] the canvas” (Line 22). The “news” that the painter has reverted to his original subject “spread[s] like wildfire through the buildings” (Line 23). However, the painter once again finds it too difficult to depict the sea and is essentially “crucified by his subject” (Line 25). The painter becomes “[t]oo exhausted even to lift his brush” (Line 26). In response to his seeming failure to produce art, other “artists leaning from the buildings” (Line 27) mock the painter.

While the painter is ridiculed by some, others “declare [his painting] a self-portrait” (Line 31). Though most paintings begin with blank canvases and accumulate color until they depict a subject, the painter works in reverse. As he works, “all indications of a subject / Beg[in] to fade” (Lines 32-33) until the canvas is left “[p]erfectly white” (Line 34). Once his canvas reaches this state, the painter “put[s] down the brush” (Line 34) as if it is finished.

When the portrait reaches its blank, finished state, the people of the “overcrowded buildings” (Line 36) begin “howl[ing]” (Line 35). In response to his work, the building dwellers throw both the painter and “the portrait” into the sea from the top of “the tallest of the buildings” (Line 37). The poem concludes with the sea “devour[ing] the canvas and the brush” (Line 38) and, presumably, the painter. Instead of capturing the sea on a blank canvas, the painter’s blank canvas is captured by the sea.