This paper examines how George Eliot in Felix Holt employs techniques which she learned from the narrative and portrait paintings which were very popular in the nineteenth century. She presents crucial scenes in such a way that we feel we are looking at narrative paintings. She also gives important roles to portraitures in order to develop the themes of the novel. While she creates for us a visualization of her themes, she also explores the possibility of verbal expression. We find that she shares the Pre-Raphaelite impulse to control the meaning of an artistic work, though her efforts to control the meaning in her work sometimes create the possibility of different interpretations from her own intention. She, however, does manage to control the meaning in her writing by means of positive redefinition of such key words as "subjection" and "illusion."