Portrait Painter

"It was the most magical thing I've ever seen. It was the greatest experience of my life, and I want to get the memory back. I don't ever want to lose it."

- Portrait Painter

The Portrait Painter ("caricature artist" in the Japanese version) is a portrait artist who traveled to Ireland and saw a dullahan twenty years before the start of the series. He has been trying to draw her since.

Appearance
The painter is an older man with grey hair. He wears a skull cap and a collared shirt under a grey-green suit jacket. When meeting Celty and Shizuo, he is wearing a bolo tie.

As a younger man visiting Ireland, his hair was black and he wore a black business suit and a white collared shirt.

Personality
He is a friendly man and a talented artist. He expresses awe and reverence when talking about the dullahan he encountered, a sight he claims he will never forget, and is frustrated by his inability to accurately portray her face on paper.

Background
Twenty years prior to the start of the series, the portrait painter visited Ireland and witnessed a dullahan carrying its head and riding in a carriage pulled by a headless horse. He was in awe of her beauty and otherworldliness and related the encounter to another Japanese traveler soon after.

Just prior to the events of the episode, Shinra meets the painter in a park and admires his sketches of the dullahan. The artist seems equally disgusted and amused by Shinra's insistence that she is perfect without a head.

Dollars/Mika Harima Arc
Celty first hears about the portrait painter from Izaya, who asks if she has ever heard of a dullahan. He tells her of a caricature artist in Yoyogi Park who claims to have seen one that had lost its head. When Celty visits the park, she is told the painter has moved on. She visits several parks in succession but is repeatedly one step behind him.

Shizuo claims to have seen the painter recently and offers to take her to him. The artist is finishing a drawing of a teenage girl and beginning to pack up for the day. When Shizuo asks him about the dullahan, he shows Celty his drawings and relates his encounter with the mythic being. Though Celty has no memory of him, she is convinced that she is the dullahan he saw. In the end, the encounter holds no clues for Celty as to the current whereabouts of her head.

Quotes

 * "I remember what I saw so clearly, but for some reason, I can't express that on paper."
 * "Everyone knows a proper dullahan should carry its head with it."