The story begins in the studio of the artist Basil Hallward, who is painting a portrait of an ext...

The story begins in the studio of the artist Basil Hallward, who is painting a portrait of an extraordinarily handsome young man named Dorian Gray. There, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a preacher of the ideas of hedonism (the pursuit of pleasure as the primary goal of life). Under the influence of Lord Henry’s speeches, Dorian realizes that his beauty is fleeting. In a fit of emotion, he makes a fateful wish: "If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old!