PAINT

There is no doubt that paint is a theme that splatters itself throughout the entire text of The Rise of Silas Lapham. Paint manifests itself in both the Lapham family and the Corey family dynamic, symbolically serving as a mask. In fact, when the concept paint is dissected it is used purely to alter something on the surface level. A canvas can change into a portrait, but ultimately the physical properties have not been altered. This notion of only touching the surface is very relevant in William Dean Howells' novel.

here are some examples:

"It'll prevent decay, and it;ll stop it, after it's begun, in tin or iron... You can cover a brick wall with it, or a railroad car, or the deck of a steam-boat, and you can't do a better thing for either" (12). 

"Lapham had not  yet reached the picture-buying stage of the rich man's development, but they decorated their house with the costliest and most abominble frescoes..." (25). 

"It was absurd for him to paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint them for nothing; so he did not paint them at all" (70).

“You architects," he says to Mr. Seymour, Silas' architect, "and the musicians are the true and only artistic creators. All the rest of us, sculptors, painters, novelists, and tailors, deal with forms that we have before us; we try to imitate."'

"He asked Mr. Corey who was about the best American painter going now. 'I don't set up to be a judge of pictures, but i know what i like,' he said" (205).