Richard Upton Pickman is a former painter from Boston, Massachusetts, notorious for his works depicting ghouls. He is the main character of the story "Pickman's Model" (1926), but he receives critical attention in "The History of the Necronomicon" (1927) and the novella "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" (1926). His great-great-great-great-grandmother was hanged by Cotton Mather during the Salem witch trials of 1692.
The narrator in "Pickman's Model" finds his paintings "implausible, strained and hysterical".
According to "The History of the Necronomicon", in 1926, Pickman vanished from his home. In "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" Randolph Carter meets with Pickman in Dreamlands. Carter relates that Pickman was an artist from Boston who introduced him to a ghoul. By this time that Carter meets him, Pickman is already mostly transformed into a ghoul himself.
His innate intelligence has made him a somewhat important and highly respected ghoul. Although he retains many of the skills which he had in the waking world, they have fallen into disuse and have atrophied greatly. Pickman prefers to keep more or less to himself, but has been known to take command of large numbers of ghouls in times of crisis.