Short Stories About Art and Artists: 10 Classics Explained
Quick answer: Ten classic short stories about art and artists, from The Last Leaf and The Oval Portrait to A Hunger Artist, Quality and The Sculptor's Funeral, summarised and compared.
Writers write about artists when they want to write about themselves without being caught, which is why the artist story is the most honest kind of fiction about ambition, failure and the price of doing one thing well. The artists here are painters, a faster, a bootmaker, a nightingale.
The collection begins with the painters who give something away, moves through the performers, and ends with two men who made boots and a piece of bronze that would not stay given. Each title links to a page that summarises the story and explains its ending.
The stories
The Last Leaf by O. Henry. Old Behrman has talked about his masterpiece for forty years and painted nothing but signboards. When the girl upstairs decides she will die with the last ivy leaf, he goes out into a night of rain with a lantern and a ladder.
The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe. A wounded traveller takes shelter in a chateau and finds, by candlelight, a portrait of a young woman so alive it frightens him, and a book that tells its history. The painter, the book says, would not look away from the canvas.
A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka. A professional faster whose forty-day fasts once drew crowds is now a cage on the way to the animals at a circus, and the attendants forget to change the sign. He explains, at the end, why it was never hard.
The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen. The Emperor of China's nightingale sings the court to tears until a jewelled clockwork bird arrives from Japan that sings the same tune every time. The real bird flies away, and years later Death sits on the Emperor's chest.
A Wagner Matinee by Willa Cather. Aunt Georgiana, once a Boston music teacher, has spent thirty years on a Nebraska claim and comes east in a black dress that smells of the farmhouse. Her nephew takes her to hear Wagner, and she grips the rail through the Prize Song.
The Sculptor's Funeral by Willa Cather. The body of Harvey Merrick, a sculptor of national reputation, comes home to a Kansas town that thought him a failure, and his pupil sits with it while the town's men drink coffee and take stock. The drunk lawyer has the last word.
Paul's Case by Willa Cather. Paul is not an artist; he is an usher at Carnegie Hall who needs the music the way others need drink, and who cannot go home to Cordelia Street afterwards. He steals to buy a week of the atmosphere.
A Work of Art by Anton Chekhov. A grateful patient gives his doctor a bronze candelabra held up by two naked women, and the doctor, embarrassed, passes it to a lawyer, who passes it to an actor, who sells it. The patient's mother buys it back, and he returns with the pair.
Quality by John Galsworthy. Two German brothers make boots in a small London shop, boots that fit like a second skin and last for years, and they will not hurry or advertise. The narrator buys a pair elsewhere once, and the elder brother sees them on his feet.
The Model Millionaire by Oscar Wilde. Hughie Erskine visits his painter friend's studio and finds an old beggar posing in rags, and gives him a sovereign. The painter later explains what the beggar was paid for sitting, and who he was.
Reading them together
The collection's argument is that art costs the artist something no one else sees, and the stories differ on whether anyone notices in time. Behrman's masterpiece is seen once, by two women; the hunger artist's is never seen at all; Gessler's boots are on the narrator's feet at the funeral. Cather's three stories are the centre, three people who needed art and paid for it in a town that did not.
The Nightingale and A Work of Art are the two comedies, and both are about an object trying to replace a gift. Andersen's clockwork bird wears out; Chekhov's candelabra will not stop coming back.
If you want to write about art and artists
What writers can take from this
- Read The Last Leaf and Quality together; both are about an old craftsman's last job.
- Cather's three stories are a course in themselves; read A Wagner Matinee first.
- The Oval Portrait and A Hunger Artist are both short and very cold; read them on different days.
- A Work of Art is Chekhov being purely funny, which is rare enough to notice.
- The Nightingale is for reading aloud, and the mechanical bird's breakdown is a lesson in how to end a fable.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which an artist's best work is seen by exactly one person, who does not know what they are looking at, and the artist has to decide whether to tell them.
Questions
What is the best short story about an artist?
A Hunger Artist is the most written about, and The Sculptor's Funeral the most quoted by working artists. The Last Leaf is the most read.
Which short stories about art are good for students?
The Last Leaf, The Nightingale, Quality and A Work of Art are short and clear. Paul's Case and A Wagner Matinee suit older students.
Which classic story about art is the shortest?
The Oval Portrait, at about twelve hundred words. A Work of Art and The Model Millionaire are each around two thousand.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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