Charlotte's portrait

Charlotte's portrait is an unfinished likeness that becomes a measure of Werther's artistic frustration and emotional attachment. He fails three times to capture Charlotte, manages only a profile sketch, and later abandons his plan to remove the picture when she marries Albert; left on the wall, it embodies his determination to hold on to his imagined place in her heart.

Attempts and Artistic Failure

Werther reports that he has begun Charlotte's portrait three times and disgraced himself each time. The repeated failures trouble him because he had formerly been very successful at taking likenesses. Although his recent experience of nature feels unusually vivid and perceptive, he says that he cannot translate that perception into clear execution: forms seem to swim and float before him, defeating a firm outline. He considers modelling in clay or wax as an alternative, but the portrait itself remains beyond his ability to complete.

The one result he can keep is a sketch of Charlotte in profile. Rather than a finished likeness, it is a reduced, partial image, and Werther says he must content himself with it. That compromise gives the portrait a double significance: it records his continuing effort to represent Charlotte while preserving the limit he cannot overcome.

The Portrait After Charlotte's Marriage

On February 20, after Charlotte and Albert are united, Werther recalls a plan tied to their wedding day: he had expected news that the date was fixed and intended to take Charlotte's profile down from the wall with solemnity and bury it with other papers he possessed. The plan would have turned the image into something to be put away, along with private documents, as he confronted the finality of the marriage.

But the expected removal does not occur. The picture still remains where it is, and Werther decides to let it remain. He says that he still occupies a place in Charlotte's heart, though only the second place, and insists that he intends to keep it. The image's continued presence thus accompanies his refusal to relinquish that emotional claim, even as he recognizes that Charlotte is married to Albert.

Narrative Significance

The portrait links the limits of representation to the limits of Werther's situation. His former skill at likeness-making cannot secure a successful image of Charlotte; the profile is all he can produce. Later, the picture survives not as a completed artistic achievement but as an object he chooses not to remove. Its persistence on the wall makes visible the contrast between the marriage that has changed Charlotte's circumstances and Werther's effort to preserve his own place in her affections.