In late Victorian London, a beautiful young man is given a portrait of himself by an admiring artist. Soon after this he treats a young woman cruelly and then notices that his portrait seems to look meaner than it used to. Eventually he cannot endure the portrait and hides it in the attic. As the years pass, he becomes ever more unscrupulous and dissolute. His friends remark how he is as handsome as ever and never seems to age. But up in the attic his picture becomes uglier and uglier.