I can’t explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again. There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 9. Dorian won’t let Basil see the portrait and tells him he won’t sit to him again. After Sibyl’s death, when a blemish appears on the painting to mark Dorian’s sin of cruelty to her, he decides to hide the picture from public view. There is a noticeable change in Dorian’s mood here as he begins to consider his own mortality and he is frightened by it. He believes that the changed painting reflects his flawed soul – the Gothic magical portrait has developed a life of its own!